Sincerity and Authenticity

By Lionel Trilling

Book Overview

"A powerful diagram of the moral life from Shakespeare to the present...a book crowded with insights."--Geoffrey Hartman, New York Times One of the twentieth century's foremost literary critics traces... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192151975
• ISBN13: 9780192151971
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Subtle, nuanced intellectual and literary history

This book, based on lectures he gave at Harvard in 1970, is delight. Trilling draws a fine but deep distinction between two conceptions of selfhood. Sincerity, or being true to yourself with an eye to being true to others, was the dominant concern of Renaissance and early modern thought and literature, from Shakespeare to Rousseau. Beginning with Wordsworth, gaining momentum throughout the 19th century, and finally emerging with full force in the 20th, though, there is a new, more morally demanding ideal of being what or who one is, apart from all external conditions. Trilling's discussion wanders about quite freely, but his observations about literature and ideas are always brilliant and refreshing. Highly recommended.