The concept of dilettantism has not always been associated with amateurism or superficiality. It played a significant role in French and German critical writing from the late eighteenth century until the fin de siEcle, embracing notions such as apprenticeship, fruitful error, parody, aestheticism and scepticism. Attempts to define dilettantism in a binary relationship with art have often been defeated by a fundamental ambivalence towards its values. The major texts on the subject are Goethe and Schiller's unfinished 'dilettantism project' (1799) and Paul Bourget's essay on Ernest Renan...