About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherHarvard University Press

ISBN-100674934857

ISBN-139780674934856

eBay Product ID (ePID)1539173

Product Key Features

Number of Pages304 Pages

Publication NameVersions of Pygmalion

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1990

SubjectGeneral, Rhetoric, Subjects & Themes / General

TypeTextbook

AuthorJ. Hillis Miller Jr.

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Language Arts & Disciplines

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.9 in

Item Weight21.7 Oz

Item Length10.2 in

Item Width6.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN89-024729

Dewey Edition20

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal809/.93353

Table Of ContentProem: Pygmalion's Prosopopoeia 1. The Ethics of Narration 2. Reading, Doing: James's What Maisie Knew 3. Just Reading: Kleist's "Der Findling" 4. Who Is He? Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" 5. Death Mask: Blanchot's L'arret de mort 6. Facing It: James's "The Last of the Valerii" Notes Acknowledgments Index

SynopsisThe literary school called 'eoedeconstruction'e� has long been dogged by the charge that it is unprincipled, its doors closed to the larger world of moral and social concern. J. Hillis Miller, one of America'e(tm)s leading teacher-critics, sets the record straight by looking into a series of fictions that allow him to show that ethics has always been at the heart of deconstructive literary criticism. Miller proves his point not by assertion but by doing'e"deconstruction is here in the hands of a master teacher. Miller'e(tm)s controlling image is Ovid'e(tm)s Pygmalion, who made a statue that came alive and whose descendants (the incestuous Myrrha, the bloodied Adonis) then had to bear the effects of what he did. All storytellers can be seen as Pygmalions, creating characters (personification) who must then act, choose, and evaluate (what Miller calls the 'eoeethics of narration'e�). If storytellers must be held accountable for what they create, then so must critics or teachers who have their own stories to tell when they write or discuss stories. If the choices are heavy, they are also, Miller wryly points out, happily unpredictable. The teacher'e(tm)s first 'eoeethical act'e� is the choice of what to teach, and Miller chooses his texts boldly. As an active reader, the kind demanded by deconstruction, Miller refashions each story, another ethical act, an intervention that may have social, political, and historical consequences. He then looks beyond text and critical theory to ask whether writing literature, reading it, teaching it, or writing about it makes anything happen in the real world of material history., The literary school called deconstruction has long been dogged by the charge that it is unprincipled, its doors closed to the larger world of moral and social concern. J. Hillis Miller, one of America s leading teacher-critics, sets the record straight by looking into a series of fictions that allow him to show that ethics has always been at the heart of deconstructive literary criticism. Miller proves his point not by assertion but by doing deconstruction is here in the hands of a master teacher.Miller s controlling image is Ovid s Pygmalion, who made a statue that came alive and whose descendants (the incestuous Myrrha, the bloodied Adonis) then had to bear the effects of what he did. All storytellers can be seen as Pygmalions, creating characters (personification) who must then act, choose, and evaluate (what Miller calls the ethics of narration ). If storytellers must be held accountable for what they create, then so must critics or teachers who have their own stories to tell when they write or discuss stories. If the choices are heavy, they are also, Miller wryly points out, happily unpredictable.The teacher s first ethical act is the choice of what to teach, and Miller chooses his texts boldly. As an active reader, the kind demanded by deconstruction, Miller refashions each story, another ethical act, an intervention that may have social, political, and historical consequences. He then looks beyond text and critical theory to ask whether writing literature, reading it, teaching it, or writing about it makes anything happen in the real world of material history."

LC Classification NumberPN56.M53M55 1990