What degree do you have no respect for?

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you would need languages (both modern languages of scholarship and varieties of the languages used in writing the original texts at that time, as well as potentially other contemporaneous languages). (Some areas might need more considerable philological training e.g. anything medieval or earlier or most literature not written in English.)

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you would need historical skills in source evaluation and handling primary sources, as the texts are not just literary editions frozen in time as often encountered in English literature but, especially the farther back you go, have multiple editions and variations - they are also material objects and the materiality of the original texts/manuscripts is essential to consider as well. This materiality may also extend to needing some art historical awareness depending on the nature of it (e.g. illuminated manuscripts, detailed decorative bindings, etc).

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You also you need a broader historical awareness of the period e.g. in this example the development of the printing press and how this influenced (or didn't) the text you are working on. This is not just a case of reading a textbook on it but you may need to actually do some microhistorical work looking at that one printer that actually printed editions of your text, what else they printed, their own background and what legal privileges they had in printing that.

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And for anything that is not contemporary, Western, and written by what may be considered the "dominant" cultural hegemonic powers, at least a certain level of understanding that you need to engage with things from a certain amount of an anthropological perspective, recognising that fundamentally even British society in the 15th Century was significantly different enough that you will be approaching it from an etic perspective to a large extent.

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Add to that the literary criticism skills that you need at the core of things, and broaden that by recognising a lot of those are rooted in continental philosophy and early structural linguistics, and these are important to at least consider when determining what if any particular theoretical framework you are working out of.

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you would need languages (both modern languages of scholarship and varieties of the languages used in writing the original texts at that time, as well as potentially other contemporaneous languages). (Some areas might need more considerable philological training e.g. anything medieval or earlier or most literature not written in English.)

•

you would need historical skills in source evaluation and handling primary sources, as the texts are not just literary editions frozen in time as often encountered in English literature but, especially the farther back you go, have multiple editions and variations - they are also material objects and the materiality of the original texts/manuscripts is essential to consider as well. This materiality may also extend to needing some art historical awareness depending on the nature of it (e.g. illuminated manuscripts, detailed decorative bindings, etc).

•

You also you need a broader historical awareness of the period e.g. in this example the development of the printing press and how this influenced (or didn't) the text you are working on. This is not just a case of reading a textbook on it but you may need to actually do some microhistorical work looking at that one printer that actually printed editions of your text, what else they printed, their own background and what legal privileges they had in printing that.

•

And for anything that is not contemporary, Western, and written by what may be considered the "dominant" cultural hegemonic powers, at least a certain level of understanding that you need to engage with things from a certain amount of an anthropological perspective, recognising that fundamentally even British society in the 15th Century was significantly different enough that you will be approaching it from an etic perspective to a large extent.

•

Add to that the literary criticism skills that you need at the core of things, and broaden that by recognising a lot of those are rooted in continental philosophy and early structural linguistics, and these are important to at least consider when determining what if any particular theoretical framework you are working out of.