What can you do with a B.A. in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry? I am an expert in my own arcane field, but sometimes feel unprepared to write about anything else.
Famed literary critic Northrop Frye felt something similar when he undertook to write a book about the Bible:
A scholar in an area not his own feels like a knight errant who finds himself in the middle of a tournament and has unaccountably left his lance at home. In such a situation he needs encouragement as well as help" (The Great Code ix).
Frye's strategy for success in this challenging endeavor was to re-frame his task as a writer. He says:
All of my books have really been teachers' manuals, more concerned with establishing perspectives than with adding specifically to knowledge" (xiv).Although Frye calls this "inadequate" and"secondhand scholarship," he also recognizes the importance of passing on existing knowledge to less skilled learners:
The teacher may do some of his work as a scholar on a popularizing level, retailing established information to less advanced students (xv).
I am not an expert on much of anything, but my training in critical thinking, close reading and analysis of a variety of texts has prepared me to present a thoughtful perspective on almost any topic. I am capable of "retailing established information" to people who don't know much about a topic, and I can correlate information from multiple sources and disciplines in a way that makes sense to non-experts.
In a post-truth America, I may indeed be a knight errant, but that makes me no less essential, and I have not left my lance at home.
"Sometimes you just need to put your head down,
grit your teeth and run into the fray."
Boss, Jeff. "10 Inspirational Quotes from Navy SEAL Training." Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, 2017. Web. 04 Jan. 2017.
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