{"product_id":"sincerity-and-authenticity-9780674808614","title":"Sincerity and Authenticity","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"A powerful diagram of the moral life from Shakespeare to the present...a book crowded with insights.\"--Geoffrey Hartman, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of the twentieth century's foremost literary critics traces the idea of the self across five hundred years of Western cultural history.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"One cannot both be sincere and seem so,\" André Gide once wrote. Attempting to inhabit sincerity to satisfy social expectations makes it into a posture or a persona--a self-defeating enterprise. What, then, does the oft-repeated injunction to \"be yourself\" really mean? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn his 1969-1970 Norton Lectures, Lionel Trilling argues that this simple piece of advice has been the source of centuries of moral perplexity. In Elizabethan England, being true to oneself was seen as a means to an end. \"To thine own self be true,\" Polonius famously advised Laertes in \u003ci\u003eHamlet\u003c\/i\u003e, \"And it must follow, as the night the day \/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.\" But this vision of the \"honest soul,\" whose pursuit of self-knowledge brings harmony with external society, gradually collapsed under the weight of modern literature and philosophy. Drawing a line from Rousseau, Robespierre, and Jane Austen through Hegel, Freud, and Joseph Conrad, Trilling brilliantly shows how sincerity was displaced by the more strenuous ideal of authenticity, in which genuine selfhood became a product of alienation and negation, a ceaseless purge of both social artifice and self-deception. In his final lectures, he presciently notes the rising embrace of deliberate inauthenticity, a development that rapidly accelerated after his death. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMoving fluidly between philosophy, literature, cultural history, and psychoanalysis, \u003ci\u003eSincerity and Authenticity\u003c\/i\u003e is a bravura performance, unraveling our labors of self-definition with the wit and effortless sophistication that made Trilling a foremost literary critic of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Lionel Trilling\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Belknap Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/01\/1973\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 200\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.52lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.49d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780674808614\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTrilling, Lionel:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was a literary critic, essayist, and author of more than ten books, including \u003ci\u003eThe Liberal Imagination \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Beyond Culture\u003c\/i\u003e. A board member and a regular contributor to both the \u003ci\u003eKenyon Review\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePartisan Review\u003c\/i\u003e, he was George Edward Woodberry Professor of Literature and Criticism at Columbia University, where his students included Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander, and Norman Podhoretz.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Belknap Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43750544900211,"sku":"9.78067E+12","price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/files\/img_6f986e72-08ca-4b57-bc02-b57fad56f81f.jpg?v=1756465132","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/sincerity-and-authenticity-9780674808614","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}