This has resulted in a number of articles, books, lectures, conference papers, exhibitions and websites ranging the bibliotopical terrain from proportional price indexes to Parisian printing presses, from monasteries to migrations, from a Harvard bard to Italian avant-garde, from wars to wangling, from publication of journals to preservation by Germans, from Swiss society to Vatican propriety. In short, we extend our gratitude to Nijhoff for having subsidized studies of the European book in its native habitat that might have otherwise never gotten off the ground or onto the title page. It s not cheating to ask them about the research facilities and hours, what materials are available on your topic, and what other humans might share your interest at the research location of your choice. You may be surprised to find a specialized bibliography or a crucial point of fact show up in response. Then, when you write your proposal for the grant, you will look as prepared and wizened as you are.
Free trips don t exist any more than free lunches do.
Be brutally honest with yourself about the value and methodology of what you re planning. If you re not, someone else will do it for you. His proposal stank. He jettisoned the artificially concocted topic and, a few years later, went for something that spoke to him, so to speak, and it clicked. It wasn t meant to be.