Description
Book SynopsisTrilling is concerned with the process by which the arduous enterprise of sincerity, of being true to one’s self, came to occupy a place of supreme importance in the moral life—and the further shift which finds that place now usurped by the darker and still more strenuous modern ideal of authenticity.
Trade ReviewA beautifully written book, its tone admirably judged and perfectly sustained… It is wide, fastidious, and deeply thoughtful in its range of reference…Temperate, controlled and delicately scrupulous, it is a tribute if ever there was one to the ‘honest consciousness.’ * Times Literary Supplement *
Sincerity and Authenticity is not only about literature but is a literary performance itself. From page to page, Trilling expresses and articulates complex movements of thought and feeling through his modulated style, the dialectical structure and rhythm of his sentences and paragraphs. In this book, as in others, he writes to advance an argument and to resist and revise it—and, in the process, to trouble and complicate our responses as readers. -- William E. Cain * Society *
Table of Contents1. Sincerity: Its Origin and Rise 2. The Honest Soul and the Disintegrated Consciousness 3. The Sentiment of Being and the Sentiments of Art 4. The Heroic, and Beautiful, and Authentic 5. Society and Authenticity 6. The Authentic Unconscious Reference Notes Index of Names
