Description
Book SynopsisThis volume responds to recent concerns about the decline of public intellectual life, particularly in Britain and America. Thinkers discuss what the role of writers and intellectuals should be in today's society, how thought can be publicly expressed, and how it relates to action.
Trade Review"[...]this is a fascinating, engaging example of the fecundity of the human intellect."
Library JournalTable of ContentsList of Contributors.
Acknowledgments.
Introduction (Helen Small).
1. The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals (Edward W. Said).
2. Pre-modern Intellectual Biography (Rita Copeland).
3. Humanism, Slavery, and the Republic of Letters (David Wallace).
4. Hamlet the Intellectual (Margreta de Grazia).
5. Deaths of the Intellectual: A Comparative Autopsy (Jeremy Jennings).
6. New Art, Old Masters, and Masked Passions (Linda S. Kauffman).
7. Apathy and Accountability: The Challenge of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the Intellectual in the Modern World (Jacqueline Rose).
8. The Sweatshop Sublime (Bruce Robbins).
9. "Every Fruit-Juice Drinker, Nudist, Sandal-Wearer…": Intellectuals as Other People (Stefan Collini).
Index.
