Logophilia

At the LRB, Colin Burrow reviews a new book about the history of philology. Of interest to me in a general sense as well, for obvious reasons, but I particularly enjoyed this bit at the end:

This layer of general interest in knowing about humanity – call it culture – can all sometimes go wrong when academic specialisms waltz into the room. My mother, who was the children’s writer Diana Wynne Jones (and whose eightieth birthday recently prompted what must be the ultimate public recognition in the form of a Google doodle: the techies in California clearly like reading fantasy), once said at a dinner with a group of American academics that she loved The Faerie Queene. ‘Oh, are you a Spenserian?’ came the eager reply. When my mother said, no, she just liked reading Spenser and liked his fantastical imagination, the light went out in her dining companions’ eyes. Yes, academic disciplines are a wet sock to the imagination, but not everything we do is contained within their soggy outlines.