Error and the Academic Self ─ The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval to Modern

Examining figures from Thomas More to Stephen Greenblatt, from George Hickes to Seamus Heaney, from George Eliot to Paul de Man, this book illuminates the wanderings of exiles, emigres, dissenters, and the socially estranged as they helped form the modern university disciplines of philology and rhetoric, literary criticism and literary theory.

Seth Lerer is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and professor of English and comparative literature at Stanford University. He is the author of six previous books, including Chaucer and His Readers.