Communities in Fiction

J. Hillis Miller

Published by Fordham University Press 2014

Communities in Fiction

J. Hillis Miller

In the series Commonalities

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823263134

Overview
Contents

About this book

Communities in Fiction reads in detail 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 for communities or non-communities in the real world.

Author / Editor information

Miller J. Hillis :

J. HILLIS MILLER is UCI Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. Among his many books are For Derrida and Literature as Conduct (both Fordham). Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He received the Modern Language Association Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2005 and in 1986 was President of the MLA.

Reviews

J. Hillis Miller's Communities in Fiction is a magnificent repondering of the Victorian novel's ability to render consciousness of self and other. Lucid and urbane, the book is a model of theoretical investigation that would be perfectly accessible to a nonspecialist reader.

—Rachel Bowlby:
Like Trollope, one of his subjects here, Hillis Miller has long perfected a style of warmly conversational lucidity. He communicates his pleasures and his perplexities as he guides you through readings that are at once leisurely and compelling.

Miller’s Communities in Fiction examines the agonistic structure of communities: how the singularity of individual parts disrupt the organizing rationales they also seek to unite. Careful exposition of six novelists allows him to reflect on fictional representations of community as well as the communities that contextualize his study: his immediate disciplinary setting, the future of the humanities, and the political climate of the United States.

—Henry Sussman:
“What brings Communities in Fiction its true distinction is the facility and creativity with which Miller retrofits each of the major artifacts in his purview to his communal ‘reality testing.’ Communities in Fiction is a work utterly remarkable for its mastery, its erudition, its theoretical creativity, and its good sense. This wonderful volume is truly delightful.”

...this is an improbably moving, in places disturbing book. In its understated way, Communities in Fiction makes a quietly compelling case for how these old books can help us think our current situation.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1. THEORIES OF COMMUNITY Williams, Heidegger, and Others Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. TROLLOPE’S THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET AS A MODEL OF VICTORIAN COMMUNITY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
3. INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY IN THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
4. CONRAD’S COLONIAL (NON)COMMUNITY Nostromo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
5. WAVES THEORY An Anachronistic Reading Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	232
6. POSTMODERN COMMUNITIES IN PYNCHON AND CERVANTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
CODA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 352
Keywords: Theory of Fiction; Raymond Williams; Heidegger; Nancy; Trollope; Hardy; Conrad; Woolf; Pynchon; Cervantes

eBook

Published: December 2, 2014
ISBN: 9780823263134