Introduction : the pursuit of error : philology, rhetoric, and the history of scholarship -- Errata : mistakes and masters in the early modern book -- Sublime philology : an elegy for Anglo-Saxon studies -- My Casaubon : the novel of scholarship and Victorian philology -- Ardent etymologies : American rhetorical philology, from Adams to de Man -- Making mimesis : exile, errancy, and Erich Auerbach -- Epilogue : Forbidden Planet and the terrors of philology