Error and the academic self : the scholarly imagination, medieval to modern / Seth Lerer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lerer, Seth, 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English philology--History.

English philology.

Scholarly publishing--Great Britain.

Scholarly publishing.

Errors and blunders, Literary--History.

Errors and blunders, Literary.

English literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

English literature.

American literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

American literature.

Error--History.

Error.

Great Britain--Intellectual life.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (253 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

introduction. The Pursuit of Error: Philology, Rhetoric, and the History of Scholarship

Chapter one. Errata: Mistakes and Masters in the Early Modern Book

Chapter two. Sublime Philology: An Elegy for Anglo-Saxon Studies

Chapter three. My Casaubon: The Novel of Scholarship and Victorian Philology

Chapter four. Ardent Etymologies: American Rhetorical Philology, from Adams to de Man

Chapter five. Making Mimesis: Exile, Errancy, and Erich Auerbach

Epilogue. Forbidden Planet and the Terrors of Philology

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780231507479

023150747X

OCLC:

826476616