Put in other words: Should I spend any time reading Marc Bloch or is that somewhat pointless in a period where Susan Reynolds' 'Fiefs and Vassals' exists?
I am a Master's student (and in about three months hopefully a PhD Candidate) in Medieval Studies and I'm realizing how little I have read of older scholarship. While visiting with a (non-medievalist) professor at my undergrad over break, he mentioned that I should read Bloch, as a significant scholar of the Middle Ages, and graciously lent me his copy of vol I of Feudal Society.
While leafing through it, I couldn't help but wonder if there's any point in reading works of scholarship from nearly a hundred years ago, especially ones about topics that have been somewhat turned on their heads in the last several years.
Is there a point at which older historical works pass their points of usefulness? I mean, no one reads Gibbon for any real historical analysis nowadays, right? Should older scholarship be treated more like curiosities than anything else?
When is a work of scholarship no longer useful?
Ps: apologies if this question has been asked before, I spend some time with the search function and couldn't come up with a thread where this was addressed.
I don't know that I have sources to cite here, so, mods, please feel free to delete this if it's not appropriate.
I'm a historical theologian/historian of Christianity. My principal area of focus is Patristics, but my minor time period is Medieval and my minor area in my Ph.D is 19th century German thought. In my experience, a lot of doctoral students are in your shoes. We realize that we're pretty much ignorant of Gibbon, Harnack, etc.
I think you could probably parse the literature into three categories, all of which ought to be studied according to their respective importance. The first is the primary literature, which, in my opinion, has the highest importance. Knowing the sources will pay off major dividends in the long run.
The second category is secondary literature. This is the modern stuff, the scholars we have to be in dialogue with now.
But there's a third category that hovers between those, though closer to the second, and that's what I call "history of the discipline." I think it's important to know this stuff because it helps situate our own secondary lit. When you know the history of your own field, I think it gives you a greater understanding of the methodologies employed therein. It's hard to understand the study of early or Medieval Christianity in modernity or early modernity without understanding early modern philosophy (so one needs to read Hume, Spinoza, Descartes, etc). It's hard to see who is influencing who without having some sort of genealogy within your own field. So, I think reading Gibbon is important if only to have some insight into the intellectual goings-on in 18th century scholarship. Maybe that's esoteric and people can argue that, only having 24 hours in any given day, one should just stick to categories 1 and 2.
I'm a layman, not an historian, but I try to research and intend to write like a historian, so I'll give my two cents, based on what I've discovered for myself in beginning to read Delbrück's History of the Art of War, Volume 3.
I see two advantages to reading older works: the first is that older scholarly works will often include large extracts, usually translated, of text from primary sources, as well as cite other primary sources to support their arguments. I originally began to read Delbrück purely to raid his quotes, appendixes and citations, and I've found quite an overwhelming amount of information that may be useful to my private studies.
Now, don't get me wrong: you still need to verify both the context and the content of any quotes or citations. This is simply good scholarship, and all historians, past and present, will be guilty to some degree of taking a quote slightly out of context or interpreting a passage in a manner the original author may not have intended.
Secondly, though old, not all of what a past author has written may be useless. Delbrück is over 130 years old at this point, but his approach to using logistical requirements to determine how valid ancient troop figures are is still valid today, if modified by a better understanding as a result of an extra 130 years of scholarship. Likewise, his thesis that Carolingian levy requirements were in fact a form of scutage is, I feel, something to be more seriously considered as, after all, a body of permanent soldiers is preferable to rotating bodies of part-time citizen soldiers. Modern scholars (especially Bachrach) have been somewhat unkind to him there.
Edit: also, it's very interesting to see a shift from a scholar of 130 years ago to a scholar of 60 years ago and then to modern scholarship, which sometimes reverts to much the same ideas as 130 years ago, such as the case of how cavalry charges were conducted. Delbrück is closer to modern opinion regarding the "shock" aspect of cavalry warfare than Verbruggen, even the latter ushered in a new wave of scholarship in his dismantling of the former.
Brother Guy Consolmagno, the current director of the Vatican Observatory, explains the difference between the sciences and the humanities (as a Jesuit with a planetary science Ph.D., he obviously has a decent background in both) as that while his scientific scholarship from early in his career is almost entirely useless beyond the data that he gathered, stuff in the humanities is timeless.
Earlier scholarship always has a use. I would read Gibbon as a primary source when studying the academic discipline of history, for example.