Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9780231123730

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Reviews

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 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 October 2007

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

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

Author Information

Seth Lerer is chair of the department of comparative literature at Stanford University and author of six previous books, including Chaucer and His Readers. He lives in the San Francisco area.

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