Product Description

At the end of the 16th century, scholars and intellectuals were seen as Faustian magicians, dangerous and sexy. By the 19th century, they were perceived as dusty and dried up, "dead from the waist down", as Browning so wickedly put it. In this study, a literary critic explores the various ways we have thought about scholars and scholarship through the ages. A.D. Nuttall focuses on three people, two real and one fictitious: the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon who lived from 1559 to 1614; Mark Pattison, 19th-century rector at Oxford; and Mr Casaubon in George Eliot's "Middlemarch". The three are intricately related, for Pattison was seen by many as the model for Eliot's Mr Casaubon and he was also the author of the best book on Isaac Casaubon. Nuttall offers a penetrating interpretation of "Middlemarch" and then describes how Pattison recorded his own introverted intellectual life and self-lacerating depression. He presents Isaac Casaubon, on the other hand, as a fulfilled scholar who personifies the ideal of detailed, unspectacular truth-telling, often imperilled in our own culture. Nuttall concludes with a meditation on morality, sexuality and the true virtues of scholarship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #816352 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
"Nuttall has written a book thoroughly alive and enlivening. It entertains, endlessly, but it also illuminates and returns emotion and love to scholarship and criticism." Harold Bloom

About the Author
A.D. Nuttall is professor of English at Oxford University and the author of numerous books.

Customer Reviews

Very Enjoyable
Although it was slated in the TLS as a book on Scholarship without scholarship, Dead from the Waste Down, is obviously the work of a polymath- it contains illuminating glimpses into the world of academia, and of popular conceptions and misconceptions of scholarship. By contrasting two real scholars with the fictional Mr. Causaubon (sorry sp) he builds an interesting and entertaining argument. It appears to be the work of a man who can afford to simply sit down and pursue a hobby-horse. It is clear that none of the characters he writes about are really his period but he illustrates them with elan, flair and the easily readable, but intelligent, persuasive and learned.
While it does not have the complete depth of Tony Nuttall's Why Tragedy Gives Pleasure? or 'A Common Sky', it is entertaining and amusing. Not too bad for holiday reading.