ENGLISH

Error and the Academic Self

By Seth Lerer

Book information

Publisher
Columbia University Press
Year
2003
ISBN
0231123728, 9780231123723
LCC
PE51 .L46 2002
Open Library ID
OL3570224M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (1737849 bytes)
Pages
388\338
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-04-18 11:31:18

Description

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 figures from Thomas More to Stephen Greenblatt, from George Hickes to Seamus Heaney, from George Eliot to Paul de Man, Error and the Academic Self argues that this critical abstraction from society and retreat into ivory towers allowed estranged groups or individuals to gain both a sense of private worth and the public legitimacy of a professional identity.

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