These seminars will focus on the general question of the use of "old" literary and philosophical works as premonitions of today that help us to come to terms with our present situation. Texts to be focused on include Imre Kertész's Fatelessness, Wallace Stevens's "The Man onthe Dump," and Kafka's "Die Sorge des Hausvaters" ("The Cares of the Father of the Family").
The first and third meetings will each take the form of a lecture with question and answer period; the middle meeting will be a discussion (around a seminar table) of issues raised.
J. Hillis Miller is the author of over 25 books on critical theory, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, narrative theory, and other arts. His works include Literature as Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James (2005), Speech Acts in Literature (2001), Black Holes: J. Hillis Miller, or, Boustrophedonic Reading (1999, with Manuel Asensi), Ariadne's Thread: Story Lines (1992), Illustration (1992), and The Ethics of Reading (1987). J. Hillis Miller is Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Irvine, where he has taught since 1986. |