David Lee Miller
Encyclopedia
David Lee Miller is a noted scholar of English Renaissance Literature, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at the University of South Carolina
at Columbia. His works include The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 Faerie Queen, (Princeton UP, 1988); Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father's Witness (Cornell UP, 2003); three edited books; and about two dozen refereed articles that have appeared in scholarly journals such as Modern Language Quarterly, English Literary History, and Publications of the Modern Language Association. He is one of four general editors of The Collected Works of Edmund Spenser, a new scholarly edition under contract to Oxford University Press
.
Miller's scholarly work has been especially devoted to the canon of Edmund Spenser
, a contemporary of Shakespeare's whose Faerie Queene is considered one of the two or three greatest epic poems in the language. Spenser was the subject of The Poem's Two Bodies in 1988, and Miller is currently helping to prepare a new scholarly edition of the great English poet. But in many of the articles, and most notably in Dreams of the Burning Child, Miller ranges freely through ancient, early modern, and modern literatures and through both popular and high cultures in order to demonstrate a central thesis: that Western culture is fixated on the sacrifice of sons as a means of shoring up patriarchal authority. The work is theoretically sophisticated, but Miller's playful, engaging style has been praised for avoiding the turgidity and pretentious jargon that have characterized much academic literary criticism in recent decades.
Prior to moving to South Carolina, Miller taught at the University of Alabama from 1978 until 1994, and at the University of Kentucky from 1994 until 2004. One of his little known, but important, achievements was his sponsorship of the first Gay Student Union at the University of Alabama in 1983 – a significant act for an untenured professor at a very conservative university.
After growing up in San Diego, California, he was educated at Yale University and the University of California, Irvine. He has won major fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Professor Miller has 3 sons, John Pruett Miller, Truman David Miller, Samuel Boatwright Miller.
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
at the University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina
The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...
at Columbia. His works include The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 Faerie Queen, (Princeton UP, 1988); Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father's Witness (Cornell UP, 2003); three edited books; and about two dozen refereed articles that have appeared in scholarly journals such as Modern Language Quarterly, English Literary History, and Publications of the Modern Language Association. He is one of four general editors of The Collected Works of Edmund Spenser, a new scholarly edition under contract to Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
.
Miller's scholarly work has been especially devoted to the canon of Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, a contemporary of Shakespeare's whose Faerie Queene is considered one of the two or three greatest epic poems in the language. Spenser was the subject of The Poem's Two Bodies in 1988, and Miller is currently helping to prepare a new scholarly edition of the great English poet. But in many of the articles, and most notably in Dreams of the Burning Child, Miller ranges freely through ancient, early modern, and modern literatures and through both popular and high cultures in order to demonstrate a central thesis: that Western culture is fixated on the sacrifice of sons as a means of shoring up patriarchal authority. The work is theoretically sophisticated, but Miller's playful, engaging style has been praised for avoiding the turgidity and pretentious jargon that have characterized much academic literary criticism in recent decades.
Prior to moving to South Carolina, Miller taught at the University of Alabama from 1978 until 1994, and at the University of Kentucky from 1994 until 2004. One of his little known, but important, achievements was his sponsorship of the first Gay Student Union at the University of Alabama in 1983 – a significant act for an untenured professor at a very conservative university.
After growing up in San Diego, California, he was educated at Yale University and the University of California, Irvine. He has won major fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Professor Miller has 3 sons, John Pruett Miller, Truman David Miller, Samuel Boatwright Miller.