The work of a master critic writing at the peak of his powers, this magisterial book draws on speech act theory, as it originated with J. L. Austin and was further developed by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in James's fiction.Three modes of speech act occur in James's novels. First, James's writing of his fictions is performative. He puts on paper words that have the power to raise in the reader the phantoms of imaginary persons. Second, James's writing does things with words that do other things in their turn, including...
The work of a master critic writing at the peak of his powers, this magisterial book draws on speech act theory, as it originated with J. L. Austin an...
In Fiction and Repetition, one of our leading critics and literary theorists offers detailed interpretations of seven novels: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thackeray's Henry Esmond, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Well-Beloved, Conrad's Lord Jim, and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts. Miller explores the multifarious ways in which repetition generates meaning in these novels--repetition of images, metaphors, motifs; repetition on a larger scale of episodes, characters, plots; and repetition from one novel to...
In Fiction and Repetition, one of our leading critics and literary theorists offers detailed interpretations of seven novels: Emily Bronte's...
This book investigates the function of topographical names and descriptions in a variety of narratives, poems, and philosophical or theoretical texts, primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries, but including also Plato and the Bible. Topics include the initiating efficacy of speech acts, ethical responsibility, political or legislative power, the translation of theory from one topographical location to another, the way topographical delineations can function as parable or allegory, and the relation of personification to landscape.
This book investigates the function of topographical names and descriptions in a variety of narratives, poems, and philosophical or theoretical texts,...
After Auschwitz to write even a single poem is barbaric. "The Conflagration of Community "challenges Theodor Adorno s famous statement about aesthetic production after the Holocaust, arguing for the possibility of literature to bear witness to extreme collective and personal experiences. J. Hillis Miller masterfully considers how novels about the Holocaust relate to fictions written before and after it, and uses theories of community from Jean-Luc Nancy and Derrida to explore the dissolution of community bonds in its wake.Miller juxtaposes readings of books about the Holocaust Keneally s...
After Auschwitz to write even a single poem is barbaric. "The Conflagration of Community "challenges Theodor Adorno s famous statement about aesth...
Communities in Fiction reads six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) in the light of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by Raymond Williams, Martin Heidegger, and Jean- Luc Nancy. The book's topic is the question of how communities or noncommunities are represented in fictional works. Such fictional communities help the reader understand real communities, including those in which the reader lives. As against the presumption that the trajectory in literature from Victorian to modern to postmodern is the story of a gradual loss...
Communities in Fiction reads six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) in the light of theories of co...
Communities in Fiction reads six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) in the light of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by Raymond Williams, Martin Heidegger, and Jean- Luc Nancy. The book's topic is the question of how communities or noncommunities are represented in fictional works. Such fictional communities help the reader understand real communities, including those in which the reader lives. As against the presumption that the trajectory in literature from Victorian to modern to postmodern is the story of a gradual...
Communities in Fiction reads six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) in the light of theories of co...
Written over a thirty-five year period, these essays reflect the changes in J. Hillis Miller s thinking on Victorian topics, from an early concern with questions of consciousness, form, and intellectual history, to a more recent focus on parable and the development of a deconstructive ethics of reading. Miller defines the term Victorian subjects in more than one sense. The phrase identifies an historical time but also names a concern throughout with subjectivity, consciousness, and selfhood in Victorian literature. The essays show various Victorian subjectivities seeking to ground...
Written over a thirty-five year period, these essays reflect the changes in J. Hillis Miller s thinking on Victorian topics, from an early concern wit...
"Theory Now and Then" contains the more overtly theoretical essays by J. Hillis Miller published between 1966 and 1989. These essays trace the trajectory of theory over the last thirty years in the United States: from the Continental Shift announced in the Yale Colloquium of 1965, through Miller s assimilation of the work of the Geneva Critics, to the shift to that deconstruction in America in which Miller played a conspicuous role. Included here are review essays on other theorists work: the Geneva Circle including Georges Poulet; Joseph Riddel, Edward Said, Meyer Abrams; and the critics...
"Theory Now and Then" contains the more overtly theoretical essays by J. Hillis Miller published between 1966 and 1989. These essays trace the traject...
Thinking Literature across Continents finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller--two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and critical perspectives--debating and reflecting upon what literature is and why it matters. Ghosh and Miller do not attempt to formulate a joint theory of literature; rather, they allow their different backgrounds and lively disagreements to stimulate generative dialogue on poetry, world literature, pedagogy, and the ethics of literature. Addressing a varied literary context ranging from Victorian literature, Chinese literary criticism and...
Thinking Literature across Continents finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller--two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and ...
Thinking Literature across Continents finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller--two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and critical perspectives--debating and reflecting upon what literature is and why it matters. Ghosh and Miller do not attempt to formulate a joint theory of literature; rather, they allow their different backgrounds and lively disagreements to stimulate generative dialogue on poetry, world literature, pedagogy, and the ethics of literature. Addressing a varied literary context ranging from Victorian literature, Chinese literary criticism and...
Thinking Literature across Continents finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller--two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and ...
