Abstract:
When humility has departed the culture and its sources recede.
As a virtue, humility is widely and deeply underestimated. Few understand it, and still fewer practise the genuine article. I hasten-humbly, of course-to add that I count myself no exemplar on either score. But like Chaucer’s Pardoner, who can preach a thumping sermon against avarice while indulging in that very vice with practised aplomb, I have contemplated embodiments of humility in many settings, both in literature and in the world, that embolden me to speak its praise while remaining, like all of us, a bit behind in its practice. Such a forthright confession of inadequacy is called a ‘humility trope’ in literary studies. I have come across few honest ones in my time as a reader.1 But before you condemn as hypocrisy my humble confession that I lack humility, I would, again humbly, point out how such a judgement would unintentionally demonstrate that I am truly humble. Thus I unfold a new twist in the old liar’s paradox of Epimenides. Have fun-I said it was tricky.
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