Description
Book SynopsisCommunities 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.
Trade Review"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." -SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 "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." -- -Henry Sussman Yale University "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." -- -Rachel Bowlby Princeton University
Table of ContentsChapter One: Theories of Community: Williams; Heidegger; Nancy Chapter Two: Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset As a Model of Victorian Community Chapter Three: Individual and Community in The Return of the Native Chapter Four: Conrad's Colonial (Non)Community: Nostromo Chapter Five: Waves Theory: An Anachronistic Reading Chapter Six: Postmodern Communities in Pynchon and Cervantes
