Error and the Academic Self - Softcover

Lerer, Seth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231123736 ISBN 13: 9780231123730

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2003

Synopsis

How and why did the academic style of writing, with its emphasis on criticism and correctness, develop? Seth Lerer suggests that the answer lies in medieval and Renaissance philology and, more specifically, in mistakes. For Lerer, erring is not simply being wrong, but being errant, and this book illuminates the wanderings of exiles, émigrés, dissenters, and the socially estranged as they helped form the modern university disciplines of philology and rhetoric, literary criticism, and literary theory. Examining a diverse group that includes Thomas More, Stephen Greenblatt, George Hickes, Seamus Heaney, George Eliot, and Paul de Man, Error and the Academic Self argues that this critical abstraction from society and retreat into ivory towers allowed estranged individuals to gain both a sense of private worth and the public legitimacy of a professional identity.

About this title

Book Description:

Examining figures from Thomas More to Stephen Greenblatt, from George Hickes to Seamus Heaney, from George Eliot to Paul de Man, this book illuminates the wanderings of exiles, émigrés, dissenters, and the socially estranged as they helped form the modern university disciplines of philology and rhetoric, literary criticism and literary theory.

About the Author:

Seth Lerer is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University. He is the author of six previous books, including Chaucer and His Readers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0231123736
• ISBN 13: 9780231123730
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388