Description
Book SynopsisThis book sets out to provide a new understanding of the nexus between the literary world and contemporary communication (iPhone et al.) in all its facets -- not Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message", but a new formula: "The medium is the maker". In this exploration of the medium -- traditional, modern, post-modern -- Miller engages with Browning, Freud, and Derrida to provide a platform of personal discovery and literary enlightenment (at times solemn, ironic, comic, and occasionally devastating).
Trade Review"For decades J Hillis Miller has been one of the best, most influential, and most prolific literary critics writing in English. Always on the cutting edge of his discipline, Miller has in many of his published works defined the location of that edge for his fellow scholars. In his new book The Medium is the Maker -- Browning, Freud, and the New Telepathic Ecotechnologies, Miller once again takes literary criticism in a fresh and unexpected direction, thinking about the way the most recent communication technologies alter notions of the self, of public and private space, of communication as thought transference, to name only a few of the many issues Miller touches on in this penetrating study. Reading Miller's criticism is always an intellectually rewarding and exhilarating experience, as any reader of The Medium is the Maker will attest." -- John T Irwin, Decker Professor in the Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University
