I suppose it’s true for all newly minted PhD’s, that the reality and weight of what’s just happened hasn’t quite sunk in yet. But four years of eye-wateringly hard work, and plenty of sweat and tears have been duly acknowledged and approved, and the bonus prize is that I was passed without revisions or corrections, so all I need to do is submit my final manuscript, and I’ll be officially awarded my PhD.
Friends and readers of this blog will be aware that my PhD journey has not been an easy one, and I’m the first to admit that I very nearly gave up several times along the way. I don’t have quite enough distance from it to produce an objective appraisal of the whole experience, but suffice it to say that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is not absolutely committed to a career in academia – whether they take the formal route of post-docs and lectureships, or the independent scholar route, which is where I’ll be heading now.
Over the last few years I’ve dropped heavy hints that all was not always as it should have been during my PhD process, and I’ve been more than a little caustic about issues of methodology, the attitudes of certain scholars, and certain teaching styles that seem designed to knock the will to live out of hapless PhD students. I will shed light on these dark hints in due course, though what I have to say is neither a saucy exposé nor a bitter and twisted might-have-been; rather it is a series of musings and considerations regarding the educational purpose of advanced study. For now though, I’d rather focus on more positive things.
The thesis
My thesis had two main objectives, the one resulting from the other. It’s main purpose was to re-examine, explore, and evaluate the work of Joséphin Péladan and to decide whether it merits further scholarly exploration, while contextualising Péladan’s work with the benefit of the most recent scholarly work on the history and content of esoteric thought. The secondary objective was the development, application, and evaluation of an interdisciplinary framework that fused aspects of esoteric and literary methodologies.
The need for this was governed mainly by the form and size of Péladan’s output – comprising hundreds of literary, dramatic, theoretical and critical texts, I was clear that I wanted to examine Péladan afresh and not rely on what I (successfully, apparently!) argued were highly problematic secondary sources. For this reason, I did not want to limit myself to studying only Péladan’s place in esoteric history (which would arguably have prevented me from exploring the actual content of his work). Nor did I want to write a comparative study of his place in French Literature, as this would have restricted me from untangling his complex esoteric referential framework.
So I needed to do a bit of both, but this had to be organised; not arbitrary, and thus I had to argue quite forcefully in favour of an organised interdisciplinary framework which was designed to get the most out of the material within the mandatory word limit, rather than attempting to force a methodological framework onto the material – a subtle, but extremely important difference.
For more on the PhD and how much was at stake with the approach I selected, as well as news on my future plans now that is over, please see my personal website.