Joseph Hillis Miller Jr. (March 5, 1928 – February 7, 2021)
was an American
literary critic and scholar who advanced theories of literary
deconstruction. He was part of the
Yale School along with scholars including
Paul de Man,
Jacques Derrida, and
Geoffrey Hartman, who advocated deconstruction as an analytical means by which the relationship between literary text and the associated meaning could be analyzed. Through his career, he was associated with the
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
,
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, and
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
, and wrote over 50 books studying a wide range of American and British literature using principles of deconstruction.
Early life
Miller was born in
Newport News, Virginia, on March 5, 1928, to Nell Martin (née Crizer) and
J. Hillis Miller Sr. His mother was a homemaker and his father a Baptist minister who was professor of psychology at the
College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William I ...
, and would go on to serve as the president of the
University of Florida
The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
.
Miller graduated from
Oberlin College (BA ''summa cum laude'', 1948) switching his major of study from Physics to English.
He moved to
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
, to start his masters at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
. During this time, he contracted polio and was noted to have completed his dissertation writing with his left hand, having lost the ability to use his right hand.
He completed his masters from the university in 1949 and his
PhD in 1952.
Career
Miller started his career as a member of the faculty at
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
,
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, in 1953.
During this time, Miller was heavily influenced by fellow Johns Hopkins professor and Belgian literary critic
Georges Poulet and the
Geneva School
The expression Geneva School refers to (1) a group of linguists based in Geneva who pioneered modern structural linguistics and (2) a group of literary theorists and critics working from a phenomenological perspective.
Geneva School of Linguisti ...
of literary criticism, which Miller characterized as "the consciousness of the consciousness of another, the transposition of the mental universe of an author into the interior space of the critic's mind."
[Vincent B. Leitch, ed., (2001). ''The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism''. "Georges Poulet". New York: W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 1318–1319.] This was also the time that was introduced to
Paul de Man who was a member of a faculty and
Jacques Derrida, a visiting professor, with whom he would remain associated.
In 1972, he joined the faculty at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
where he taught for fourteen years. At Yale, he worked alongside prominent literary critics Paul de Man and
Geoffrey Hartman, where they were collectively known as the
Yale School of deconstruction, in contention with prominent Yale influence theorist
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
.
[Vincent B. Leitch (Ed.). (2001). ''The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism''. "Cleanth Brooks" 1352.]
By this time, Miller had emerged as an important humanities and literature scholar specializing in Victorian and Modernist literature, with a keen interest in the ethics of reading and reading as a cultural act.
At a time, he was supervising at least 14 doctoral dissertations studying Victorian literature and novels.
In 1986, Miller left Yale to work at the
University of California Irvine, where he was later followed by his Yale colleague Derrida. During the same year, he served as president of the Modern Language Association, and was honored by the MLA with a lifetime achievement award in 2005. In 2004, he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. Both at Yale and UC Irvine, Miller mentored an entire generation of American literary critics including noted queer theorist
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. He was Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the
University of California Irvine until 2001.
After his retirement, he wrote over 15 books and many articles in journals and was also active on the international lecturing circuit. He was also served on dissertation committees in his retirement supervising dissertations and doctoral theses works at
UC Irvine
UC may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two
** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme
* Universal Century, one of the t ...
,
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, and the
University of Queensland
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
.
Role as a deconstructionist
Miller was associated with a group of scholars including Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and Geoffrey Hartman, collectively referred to as the
Yale School, who advanced
deconstruction, an analytical approach of associating and drawing linkages between literary text and the associated meaning. The theory espoused that words and texts had linkages to other expressed words and texts. These built on ideas and themes that Derrida and de Man had brought along from Europe, while Miller joined them.
He applied these techniques to a range of American and British works, including prose as well as poetry. Throughout his career, he would go on to write over 35 books and many articles in journals advancing these themes.
Miller defined the movement as searching for "the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all",
and said that there are multiple layers to any text, both its clear surface and its deep countervailing subtext:
On the one hand, the "obvious and univocal reading" always contains the "deconstructive reading" as a parasite encrypted within itself as part of itself. On the other hand, the "deconstructive" reading can by no means free itself from the metaphysical reading it means to contest.
Miller's "The Critic as Host" could be viewed as a reply to
M. H. Abrams
Meyer Howard Abrams (July 23, 1912 – April 21, 2015), usually cited as M. H. Abrams, was an American literary critic, known for works on romanticism, in particular his book ''The Mirror and the Lamp''. Under Abrams's editorship, ''The Norton An ...
, who presented a paper, "The Deconstructive Angel," at a session of the
Modern Language Association in December 1976, criticizing deconstruction and the methods of Miller. Miller presented his paper just after Abrams's presentation at the same session. He made the case that words and text lacking objective outside or providing meaning didn't mean they were the "prison-house of language," but, instead, they were a "place of joy" where the critics had the freedom to associate and provide various possibilities eventually guiding the meaning.
The movement continued to gain popularity through the next decade, presenting a paper called "Triumph of Theory" at the 1986 session of the
Modern Language Association.
He was also noted to have made the topic of
deconstruction more accessible to a wider audience by publishing in magazines including ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...
'', and ''
The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
''.
He was also a defender of the movement in the late 1980s when the field was losing some of its popularity.
He leaned on ideas that he termed 'ethics of learning' where he countered critics by arguing that it was the reader's obligation to try and find meaning in the text even when it appeared impossible.
Personal life
Miller married Dorothy James in 1949, and remained married until her death in January 2021. The couple had two daughters and a son. Miller died on February 7, 2021, the month after Dorothy 's death, at his home in
Sedgwick, Maine
Sedgwick is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,202 at the 2020 census. The town includes the village of ''Sargentville''.
The countryside around Sedgwick is a haven for birdwatchers, as well as an out-of-the-wa ...
; he was 92.
Books
*(1958
''Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels''* (1963) ''The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers''
* (1965) ''Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers''
* (1968) ''The Form of Victorian Fiction: Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Meredith, and Hardy''
* (1970) ''Thomas Hardy, Distance and Desire''
* (1971) ''Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank''
* (1982) ''Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels''
* (1985) ''The Linguistic Moment: from Wordsworth to Stevens''
* (1985) ''The Lesson of Paul de Man''
* (1987) ''The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin''
* (1990) ''Versions of Pygmalion''
* (1990) ''Victorian Subjects''
* (1990) ''Tropes, Parables, Performatives: Essays on Twentieth Century Literature''
* (1991) ''Theory Now and Then''
* (1991) ''Hawthorne & History: Defacing It''
* (1992) ''Ariadne's Thread: Story Lines''
* (1992) ''Illustration''
* (1995) ''Topographies''
* (1998) ''Reading Narrative''
* (1999) ''Black Holes''
* (2001) ''Others''
* (2001) ''Speech Acts in Literature''
* (2002) ''On Literature''
* (2005) ''The J. Hillis Miller Reader''
* (2005) ''Literature as Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James''
* (2009) ''The Medium is the Maker: Browning, Freud, Derrida, and the New Telepathic Ecotechnologies''
* (2009) ''For Derrida''
* (2011) ''The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz''
* (2012) ''Reading for Our Time: Adam Bede and Middlemarch Revisited''
* (2014) ''Communities in Fiction''
* (2015) ''An Innocent Abroad: Lectures in China''
* (2016) ''Thinking Literature Across Continents'' (with
Ranjan Ghosh)
See also
*
List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction
This is a list of thinkers who have been dealt with deconstruction, a term developed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).
__NOTOC__
The thinkers included in this list ''have Wikipedia pages'' and satisfy at least one of the three ...
* The logic technique of
Ariadne's thread
Further reading
*
Robert Magliola. Appendix ii, in ''Derrida on the Mend''. W. Lafayette: Purdue Univ. Press, 1983; 1984; rpt. 2000. Magliola, pp. 176–187, demonstrates deconstructive literary criticism as it was practiced in the U.S.A. circa 1970s-1980s, but also argues that J. Hillis Miller seems not to exploit the full implications of Derridean deconstruction (see in particular pp. 176–77 and 186-87).
References
External links
Archival collections
Guide to the J. Hillis Miller Papers.Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Guide to the Barbara Cohen Manuscript Materials.Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Nidesh Lawtoo and J. Hillis Miller, The Critic and the Mime: J. Hillis Miller in Dialogue with Nidesh Lawtoo, The Minnesota Review, 95.
Miller's webpage at the University of California at IrvineRecording of interview with Miller at the UCD Humanities InstituteInterviewwith Miller about his recent book ''The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz'' on "New Books in Critical Theory"
Documentary
*
First Sail: J Hillis MillerDocumentary film by Dragan Kujundžić
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, J. Hillis
1928 births
2021 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
Academics from Virginia
American academics of English literature
American literary critics
Deconstruction
Harvard University alumni
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Oberlin College alumni
People from Newport News, Virginia
People from Sedgwick, Maine
Phenomenologists
University of California, Irvine faculty
Writers from Maine
Writers from Virginia
Yale University faculty
Presidents of the Modern Language Association