My art is too advanced.

Chapter 314 The Next Focus! (Seeking monthly votes!!!)

And one more thing.

Zhou Yue also took it to heart.

Lu Cheng said that the focus recently has been on obscure and rare arts. What are obscure and rare arts? They are oracle bone script and other ancient scripts that have been passed down for so many years.

Zhou Yue felt it was necessary for him to get a piece of the pie in this field.

Or to say, to achieve something in this field.

So he went directly to Dean Chen.

"Professor Zhou, what brings you here lately? I heard that the two graduate students you taught have already met the graduation requirements? You've told them to apply for graduation anytime?"

"Yeah, I don't have much time to train them anyway, so it's better to let them find jobs sooner."

But in fact, no matter how busy he is each week, he will still find time to teach a class to the two of them.

He felt that was about enough.

Otherwise, he would indeed be extremely derelict in his duties as a teacher.

He doesn't allow himself to have any moral blemishes in the teaching profession; at the very least, he will do his best to teach the knowledge that should be taught.

As for the drinking incident last time, it doesn't have much to do with moral stains.

If that can be considered a moral stain, then almost every year, many people have confessed their feelings to him both in and out of class.

Most of them were students.

There's nothing we can do about it, and these students are all very talented; they have master's and doctoral degrees from various universities.

He even saved a meme on his phone that says, "Please, please stop confessing your feelings to me. I'm begging you to leave me alone."

So there's nothing to it at all.

"But now I plan to have two students help me with some things."

"Hasn't the sorting of the bamboo slips over there almost been completed?"

"Although it has not yet been translated into modern language, some of the content in the ancient script has already been published."

Of course, most of them are pictures.

Only a few relatively complete entries were fully compiled and then annotated using traditional Chinese characters.

These images are quite good for him, considering that for their industry, they basically don't need to be translated into modern Chinese anymore.

"So what do you want?" Dean Chen asked.

"I want students to analyze the inherent aspects of these ancient characters, such as their shapes, meanings, logic, and grammatical issues."

"What's the use of this?" Dean Chen frowned slightly. "There are indeed some newly discovered variant characters inside, which are characters that are different from the characters we commonly use, but they express the same meaning. However, these characters don't seem to be anything special."

"If you want to write a paper, you can choose some of the less common ones; there's no need to compile all of them."

"I just want to make the research more in-depth." Zhou Yue paused before speaking, "Analyzing it from the perspective of writing, using today's writing to interpret ancient writing, is a very meaningful thing."

"Ah."

"What happens next? Will it be published as a paper?" Dean Chen felt he couldn't understand him.

Zhou Yue is definitely a smart person; you can tell from those top-tier journal articles.

But what is the point of analyzing ancient scripts now, especially starting from the perspective of the characters themselves?

"I want to write a dictionary that includes the evolution of various character forms from ancient times to the present, as well as the various meanings of characters, from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese. Because language undergoes semantic changes during its transmission, but few people have probably listed these changes completely." "We can analyze the existing materials on the market, and also this batch of bamboo slips. There are so many ancient characters on these bamboo slips, and they are so complete. What we need is this batch of unverified characters to verify our findings. That's how scholarship works."

Dean Chen remained silent this time.

“But I don’t think Professor Zhou can complete such a large project with just two students.”

"And how long does Professor Zhou plan to take to complete this project?"

"One year?"

"Half a year," Zhou Yue said after a pause.

"Six months? That's an exaggeration! I think even collecting the data might take more than six months!"

Dean Chen was truly awestruck by his magnanimity.

For a humanities major, six months is probably not enough time to research and read materials. At least for projects involving the collation of ancient books, he felt that they were calculated from three years onwards.

Not to mention such a comprehensive dictionary.

"It's alright. I'll handle everything personally for the next six months. We can put the architecture department's affairs on hold for now. After all, I've already done most of what needs to be done in terms of architecture."

"Next, it's just simple teaching; I just need to supervise doctoral students."

This is his current thought. After all, he doesn't have much to worry about now. For example, he can delegate architectural design to his doctoral students.

He can also have his doctoral students review the journal articles he has.

There was even Dr. Dong there.

So although his schedule looks packed right now, there are many things he can actually cancel.

He genuinely intended to apply to higher authorities for permission to undertake this large dictionary project himself.

After all, he is a literature professor and is fully qualified to apply for this kind of project.

Even if you can't get national funding, you can apply at the provincial level.

Perhaps the only thing to consider is how to promote and popularize the dictionary after its successful publication.

It should at least be fully popularized in academia.

But he felt it was a very simple matter and there was no need to worry too much. As long as the book was good, gold wouldn't be afraid of being buried in the ground.

Moreover, he still maintains contact with most of the leading figures in linguistics and philology.

For example, Director Li; I discussed some issues related to ancient writing with him just a few days ago.

Director Li's assessment of him was: a complete database!
The knowledge they have in this area of ​​ancient writing is already at an incredible level.

Because no matter how tricky or difficult the problem is, it's no big deal for him.

Some of the texts that Director Li needs to confirm repeatedly, he might only reply with a single word.

And this word perfectly corroborates Director Li's line of thinking.

He would only explain when Director Li asked again, and his explanations were extremely well-organized. He could analyze the issues from different angles, and if you asked him to produce any documents, he would cite them in detail!
Therefore, Director Li would come to him whenever he encountered a problem.

This is absolutely unbelievable to outsiders.

Director Li is a top figure at Peking University, equivalent to a top academician in the humanities.

(End of this chapter)