The J Hillis Miller Reader

This anthology exhibits the diversity, inventiveness, and intellectual energy of the writings of J. Hillis Miller, the most significant North American literary critic of the twentieth century. From the 1950s onward, Miller has made invaluable contributions to our understanding of the practice and theory of literary criticism, the ethics and responsibilities of teaching and reading, and the role of literature in the modern world. He has also shown successive generations of scholars and students the necessity of comprehending the relationship between philosophy and literature. Divided into six sections, the volume provides more than twenty significant extracts from Miller’s works. In addition, there is a new interview with Miller, as well as a series of specially commissioned critical responses to Miller’s work by a number of the leading figures in literary and cultural studies today. Following a comprehensive critical introduction by the editor, each section has a brief introduction, directing the reader toward pertinent themes. There is also a comprehensive bibliography and a chronology of Miller’s professional life and activities. This reader, the first of Miller's work in English, provides an indispensable overview and introduction to one of the most original critical voices to have emerged since the inception of the teaching of English and American literature in universities in the English-speaking world.

This, the first reader of Miller's work in English, is an indispensable overview and introduction to one of the most original and challenging critical voices to have emerged since the inception of the teaching of English and American literature in universities in the English-speaking world.

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Examines texts in which novelists read themselves, discusses the influence of reading on the reader, and explores the relationship between literature and society

This is the first book to discuss the full sweep of the work of J. Hillis Miller, from his earliest writing in the 1950s to those near the time of his death in February 2021 across the genres of his criticism and theory—poetry, fiction, drama, fiction, non-fiction. The book examines Miller’s preference for close and careful reading of individual literary and critical works over abstract theory. The study will discuss the member of the so-called Yale School of deconstruction to die but will see him as a reader and lover of literature, someone interested in Georges Poulet and phenomenology and in Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. Miller was concerned about many aspects of literature and life, including the pleasure of reading and writing as in climate change, which he saw as the crisis of our time. Miller was well known in humanities and literature worldwide, one of the greatest of modern critics and theorists.

J. Hillis Miller's text deals mainly with Anthony Trollope's Ayala's angel and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu.

Debates rage over what kind of literature we should read, what is good and bad literature, and whether in the global, digital age, literature even has a future. But what exactly is literature? Why should we read literature? How do we read literature? These are some of the important questions J. Hillis Miller answers in this beautifully written and passionate book. He begins by asking what literature is, arguing that the answer lies in literature's ability to create an imaginary world simply with words. On Literature also asks the crucial question of why literature has such authority over us. Returning to Plato, Aristotle and the Bible, Miller argues we should continue to read literature because it is part of our basic human need to create imaginary worlds and to have stories. Above all, On Literature is a plea that we continue to read and care about literature.