Error and the Academic Self: The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval to Modern (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780231123730)

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, 駑igr駸, 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.

Author: Seth Lerer
ISBN-10: 0231123736
ISBN-13: 9780231123730
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/17/2003
Pages: 388
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 8.98h x 6.10w x 0.82d