Error and the Academic Self [Paperback]

Seth Lerer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231123736 | ISBN-13: 978-0231123730 | Publication Date: February 15, 2003 0

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Writing in a lively, engaging, and sometimes humorous manner, Lerer (Stanford Univ.) fills this book with intricate reasoning about the profession of scholarship and thus provides a unique approach to the study of textual criticism over the ages... a dizzying but enjoyable romp over a road not taken before.

(Choice October 2007)

A lively historical survey of how people discovered and developed new forms of expression bundled into the English language.

(James A. Cox The Midwest Book Review )

Review

Lerer writes brilliantly on academic terror of error: on our present and inherited fears of making mistakes, and on associated anxieties of being caught out of place, or of making our way -- as book-loving, would-be professionals -- to somewhere new and strange. It is a passionate and absorbing book, self-reflective but not self-indulgent, to be read by all those who care about the long history and immediate future of literary scholarship.

(David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English and chair, University of Pennsylvania

of California at Berkeley

, professor of comparative literature, University

of California at Berkeley

, professor of comparative literature, University

of California at Berkeley

, professor of comparative literature, University

of California at Berkeley )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (February 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231123736
• ISBN-13: 978-0231123730
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,662,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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