TY - BOOK ID - 77905021 TI - Error and the academic self PY - 2002 SN - 023150747X 9780231507479 0231123728 9780231123723 0231123736 9780231123730 PB - New York DB - UniCat KW - English philology KW - Scholarly publishing KW - Errors and blunders, Literary KW - English literature KW - American literature KW - Error KW - Anachronisms, Literary KW - Blunders, Literary KW - Literary anachronisms KW - Literary blunders KW - Literary errors and blunders KW - Mistakes, Literary KW - Literature KW - Academic publishing KW - Publishers and publishing KW - Germanic philology KW - Belief and doubt KW - Knowledge, Theory of KW - Relativity KW - Truth KW - Truthfulness and falsehood KW - History. KW - History and criticism KW - Theory, etc. KW - Great Britain KW - Intellectual life. KW - Higher education KW - English language UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77905021 AB - 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. ER -