Literary history and the challenge of philology
Subtitle: the legacy of Erich Auerbach
By: edited by Seth Lerer.
Contributors: Lerer, Seth, 1955-
Series: Figurae; Figurae (Stanford, Calif.)
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 301
Subjects: Auerbach, Erich, 1892-1957.; Philology.; Literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.; Language and history.; Literature and history.
Description: A century after his birth and fifty years after the composition of his powerfully influential Mimesis, Erich Auerbach is still a touchstone for contemporary academic debates on the place of historical criticism in the construction of literary theory, on the relations between intellectual activity and political action, and on the function of the critic in recording - or effecting - social change.

These fourteen essays draw on new biographical information and recent developments in literary theory and cultural studies to reinterpret Auerbach's work, both in the social and historical contexts of its author's life - a Jew in 1930's Germany, an academic exile in Turkey, and, later, an intellectual emigre in America - and in its current institutional context.

But this is more than a volume on the writings of a single critic. Taken together, the essays challenge and critique some of the most vital issues in contemporary humanistic study: for example, the place of philology in the curriculum, the institutional history of literature departments, the status of the Western canon, and the concept of periodization in literary history.

These contributions illustrate how a career in scholarship - whether Auerbach's or anyone else's - is one of constant renegotiations of the scholar's pact with the past and of the responsibilities owed to a politically charged present.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-298) and index.