Reading Victorian Literature : Essays in Honour of J. Hillis Miller

A Festschrift honouring J. Hillis Miller and his contribution to Victorian Studies and nineteenth-century criticism Provides stheoretically informed critical essays on nineteenth-century and Victorian literature, by major internationally recognized scholars Chapters provide detailed close readings of the work of J Hillis Miller, Thomas Hardy, Walter Pater, William Michael Rossetti, George Gissing, Charles Dickens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad Showcases a major new essay by J Hillis Miller, as well as a previously unpublished interview with Miller Reading Victorian Literature provides a critical commentary on major authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from Dickens to Conrad. At the same time, the assembled group of internationally recognised scholars engages with Miller’s work, influence and significance in the study of that era. The volume includes original work by Miller and interviews with him. Cover Reading Victorian Literature – Essays in Honour of J. Hillis Miller Copyright Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction: There Can Be No Doubt - The Reading of J. Hillis Miller I Singular Hardy Chapter 1 Varieties of Rural Experience Chapter 2 A ‘Response’ for J. Hillis Miller ‘There were three men came out of the west’ Chapter 3 ‘Silent knowing’ and the Natural World in Hardy’s Poetry ‘What consciousness grasps’ Chapter 4 The Hills Have Eyes II Self and World Chapter 5 J. Hillis Miller’s Hopkins Chapter 6 Walter Pater in the Wilderness Chapter 7 ‘This world is now thy pilgrimage’ Chapter 8 Personal and Political Fainéance in George Gissing’s Veranilda Chapter 9 Great Expectations III Histories, Historicities Chapter 10 How Not to Historicise a Poem Chapter 11 Hellenising the Roman Past Chapter 12 The Ghost in the Machinal Chapter 13 J. Hillis Miller’s All Souls’ Day IV Strange Pleasures Chapter 14 The Comedian as the Letter C Chapter 15 Dickens’s Theatre of Shame Chapter 16 Critical Listening and Rhetorical Reading Chapter 17 Repetition and/of/in Victorian Pleasures Chapter 18 Philanthropic Rot in Print Run for Profit V Interviews Chapter 19 The Pleasure of That Obstinacy Chapter 20 Toward an Appreciation of the Victorian Umwelt Afterword Dickens in My Life Bibliography Index