December 02, 2008

English Faculty Colloquium with Professors Kurt Fosso and Jerry Harp

In his recent book, ON LITERATURE (2002), J. Hillis Miller recounts his curious intuition, active in him since he was a young reader, that literary works precede their being written down; his perception or sense is that the text pre-exists in some Platonic realm.

J. Hillis Miller’s Virtual Reality of Reading

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

3:30pm Miller Center for the Humanities, Room 102

In his recent book, ON LITERATURE (2002), J. Hillis Miller recounts his curious intuition, active in him since he was a young reader, that literary works precede their being written down; his perception or sense is that the text pre-exists in some Platonic realm. This idea is a curious one coming from one of our “arch-deconstructionist” critics, one of the leaders of a “movement” much devoted to critiquing the traditional metaphysics of presence typified by Plato’s doctrine of Forms. In what sense might this Platonic realm or script “exist” for a deconstructonist like Miller? Our presentation will include several possible answers along with examples of their relevance to the reading and meaning of literary texts.