Longtime KSAS English professor made deconstruction more widely accessible
Image caption: J. Hillis Miller
Credit: JEREMY MARYOTT Feb 23, 2021
J. Hillis Miller, among the most distinguished literary critics and theorists and a 19-year professor in the Krieger School s Department of English, died February 7 at his home in Sedgwick, Maine. He was 92.
Part of the Yale School of the literary deconstruction movement, Miller helped revolutionize the study of literature. In dozens of books, he shaped ideas about rhetoric and fiction, literature and ethics, and the ways that texts can and cannot say what they mean.
Critics of deconstruction which held that words and texts only have meaning in relation to other words and texts worried about the implications of the premise that texts had no inherent meaning. In contrast, Miller maintained that rather than stripping texts of purpose, the interpretation freed readers to experience all possible meanings, making literature a place of joy.