Error and the Academic Self - The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval to Modern

Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-231-12373-0
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 388 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lerer, Seth

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Pursuit of Error: Philology, Rhetoric, and the History of Scholarship1. Errata: Mistakes and Masters in the Early Modern Book2. Sublime Philology: An Elegy for Anglo-Saxon Studies3. My Casaubon: The Novel of Scholarship and Victorian Philology4. Ardent Etymologies: American Rhetorical Philology, from Adams to de Man5. Making Mimesis: Exile, Errancy, and Erich AuerbachEpilogue: Forbidden Planet and the Terrors of Philology

Über Autor(innen)

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.