The Burdens of Perfection: On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Andrew H. Miller

Published by Cornell University Press 2011

The Burdens of Perfection

On Ethics and Reading in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Andrew H. Miller

https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460838

Overview
Contents

About this book

A study of moral perfectionism in nineteenth-century British culture, this book reads a wide range of essayists, poets, and novelists through the lens of ethics and philosophy of mind.

Author / Editor information

Andrew H. Miller is Professor of English and Director of the Victorian Studies Program at Indiana University and Editor of Victorian Studies. He is the author of Novels Behind Glass: Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative.

Reviews

Stanley Cavell, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus, Harvard University:

The passion and the learning throughout Andrew H. Miller's marvelous book constitute a brace of virtues much admired by the Victorians he justly admires. The demonstration that the transcendent novels of the Victorian period precisely confront skepticism with respect to the minds of others serves as a standing rebuke to theories of knowledge in the bulk of what became university philosophy.

Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter:

In his practice of moral reflection, Andrew H. Miller explicitly reveals what has often been thought but not so well expressed, that literary criticism has returned to ethics. Miller charts this return through philosophers who have not been so visible in our climate of new historicism—Stanley Cavell, Stuart Hampshire, Bernard Williams—and novelists and essayists who have. The results are agitating, like moral improvement.

Garrett Stewart, James O. Freedman Professor of Letters, University of Iowa:

Andrew H. Miller's book can't help but seem path-clearing. The Burdens of Perfection is as fresh as it is learned; original in its conception, structure, and emphasis; and notable for the gait and responsiveness of its lucid, meditative prose. Miller's scholarship is seasoned and searching, both assured and bravely speculative, with the readings of fiction often elating in the compressed rightness of their surprise and the exemplarity of their selection.

James Eli Adams, Cornell University:

The Burdens of Perfection is one of those very rare books that stimulates me to rethink almost everything I know about Victorian literature, and a good deal beyond. In analyzing the nineteenth-century preoccupation with perfectionism, Andrew H. Miller offers a rich, brilliant study of the ethical allure of narration—our appeal to narrative as a means of understanding ourselves, our relations to other people, and what we might become. As he explores the burdens of perfection, Miller offers compelling insights into a broad range of contemporary literary and philosophical reflection, and develops a remarkable and distinctive critical voice of his own.

Philip Davis:

One of the best books on Victorian writing to have appeared in the last ten years.

Andrew H. Miller makes the compelling, persuasive argument that the moral perfectionism so deeply embedded in nineteenth-century writing, particularly in Victorian fiction, represents not a position adopted by some writers and rejected by others but rather 'a field on which writers arrayed themselves.'.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Resisting, Conspiring, Completing: An Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. The Narrative of Improvement
1. Skepticism and Perfectionism I: Mechanization and Desire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
2. Skepticism and Perfectionism II: Weakness of Will Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
Interlude: Critical Free Indirect Discourse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
3. Reading Thoughts: Casuistry and Transfiguration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
Part II. The Moral Psychology of Improvement
4. Perfectly Helpless Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
5. Responsiveness, Knowingness, and John Henry Newman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
6. The Knowledge of Shame Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
7. On Lives Unled Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Keywords: England; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: August 15, 2011
ISBN: 9780801460838