Paul Allen Miller – författare

Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero offers a fundamental re-examination of the relation between truth and enjoyment as understood in the traditional confrontation between rhetoric and philosophy in Cicero. His simultaneous advocacy of classical rationality and continued emphasis on the importance of performativity and enjoyment in language-on ratio as a desire (cupiditas) and force (vis) in the real-situates him at the crossroads of reason and the unconscious. Where the modern concept of truth abstracts truth from the subjective experience of speaker and hearer, for Cicero truth is inseparable from our experience of it, and it is precisely the possibility of their separation that he criticizes in works like De Oratore and De Re Publica where he seeks an ideal reconciliation between rhetoric and philosophy, truth and enjoyment. This book looks at the problem of enjoyment (jouissance) as central to understanding the differend between rhetoric and philosophy. Paul Allen Miller distinguishes "pleasure" from "enjoyment," with pleasure always being balanced by the constraints of the reality principle and hence always open to substitution and deferral. Jouissance, however, is a drive that leads beyond any utilitarian calculus, seeking a form of radical experience that can be both sublime and destructive. There has never been a psychoanalytic treatment of Cicero's philosophical works, and while we must beware of crude attempts to psychoanalyze a long-dead author, Freud's hermeneutic model can provide new insights into Cicero's investment in concepts of desire, the sublime, and the abject, as well as how these concepts undergird his understanding of rational appeals to his audience. The conflict between rhetoric and philosophy dates to at least the fifth century. It has often understood itself as a conflict between a discourse that speaks to desire and one that speaks to truth. In the Gorgias, the rhetor is compared to the pastry chef, while the philosopher is the doctor whose bitter gall leads to health. Cicero is situated at this nexus between these figures, and, as he has Crassus argue in De Oratore Book 3, we live a more destitute and impoverished existence since these functions of discourse, truth and desire, have been split apart. Miller offers the first psychoanalytic account of Cicero as a philosopher and rhetorician, bringing a fresh reading of five Cicero's major works during a crucial period of the Roman republic.

Diotima at the Barricades argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in post-modern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient texts in the western philosophical and literary tradition. Paul Allen Miller shows how individual works of Anglo-American figures such as Toril Moi, Judith Butler, and Kaja Silverman, as well as movements such as queer theory, are rooted in feminist theoretical debates that began in the sixties in France and have continued right up to the present day. Miller demonstrates that French philosophy as represented by writers as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Sarah Kofman, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Luce Irigaray have had a profound influence on literary, theoretical, and cultural studies in the Anglo-American world. He reveals that in order to understand the intellectual substructure of much of later Anglo-American critical theory, it is crucial to examine the development of post-modern French feminist thought in relation to its dialogue with antiquity. In modern feminism and post-structuralism, the ancient world, and Plato in particular, truly function as our theoretical unconscious.

Diotima at the Barricades argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in post-modern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient texts in the western philosophical and literary tradition. Paul Allen Miller shows how individual works of Anglo-American figures such as Toril Moi, Judith Butler, and Kaja Silverman, as well as movements such as queer theory, are rooted in feminist theoretical debates that began in the sixties in France and have continued right up to the present day. Miller demonstrates that French philosophy as represented by writers as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Sarah Kofman, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Luce Irigaray have had a profound influence on literary, theoretical, and cultural studies in the Anglo-American world. He reveals that in order to understand the intellectual substructure of much of later Anglo-American critical theory, it is crucial to examine the development of post-modern French feminist thought in relation to its dialogue with antiquity. In modern feminism and post-structuralism, the ancient world, and Plato in particular, truly function as our theoretical unconscious.

Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness presents a model for studying the history of lyric as a genre. Prof Miller draws a distinction between the work of the Greek lyrists and the more condensed, personal poetry that we associate with lyric. He then confronts the theoretical issues and presents a sophisticated, Bakhtinian reading of the development of the lyric form from its origins in archaic Greece to the more individualist style of Augustan Rome. This book will appeal to classicists and, since English translations of passages from the ancient authors are provided, to those who specialise in comparative literature.

This indispensable volume provides a complete course on Latin erotic elegy, allowing students to trace a coherent narrative of the genre's rise and fall, and to understand its relationship to the changes that marked the collapse of the Roman republic, and the founding of the empire.The book begins with a detailed and wide-ranging introduction, looking at major figures, the evolution of the form, and the Roman context, with particular focus on the changing relations between the sexes. The texts that follow range from the earliest manifestations of erotic elegy, in Catullus, through Tibullus, Sulpicia (Rome's only female elegist), Propertius and Ovid.An accessible commentary explores the historical background, issues of language and style, and the relation of each piece to its author's larger body of work. The volume closes with an anthology of critical essays representative of the main trends in scholarship; these both illuminate the genre's most salient features and help the student understand its modern reception.

This indispensable volume provides a complete course on Latin erotic elegy, allowing students to trace a coherent narrative of the genre's rise and fall, and to understand its relationship to the changes that marked the collapse of the Roman republic, and the founding of the empire.The book begins with a detailed and wide-ranging introduction, looking at major figures, the evolution of the form, and the Roman context, with particular focus on the changing relations between the sexes. The texts that follow range from the earliest manifestations of erotic elegy, in Catullus, through Tibullus, Sulpicia (Rome's only female elegist), Propertius and Ovid.An accessible commentary explores the historical background, issues of language and style, and the relation of each piece to its author's larger body of work. The volume closes with an anthology of critical essays representative of the main trends in scholarship; these both illuminate the genre's most salient features and help the student understand its modern reception.

It has seemed at times that there is no neutral territory between those who see Bakhtin as the practitioner of a kind of neo-Marxist, or at least materialist, deconstruction and those who look at the same texts and see a defender of traditional, liberal humanist values and classical conceptions of order, a conservative in the true sense of the term. Arising from a conference under the same title held at Texas Tech University, Carnivalizing Difference seeks to explore the actual and possible relationships between Bakhtinian theory and cultural practice. The introduction explores the changing configurations of our understanding of Bakhtin's work in the context of recent theory and outlines how that understanding can inform, and be informed by, culture both ancient and modern. Eleven articles, spanning a wide range of periods and cultural forms, then address these issues in detail, revealing the ways in which Bakhtinian thought illuminates, sometimes obfuscates, but always challenges.

A wide variety of texts by the Latin satirists are presented here in a fully loaded resource to provide an innovative reading of satire's relation to Roman ideology.Brimming with notes, commentaries, essays and texts in translation, this book succeeds in its mission to help the student understand the history of Latin's modern scholarly reception.Focusing on the linguistic difficulties and problems of usage, and examining aspects of meter and style necessary for poetry appreciation, the commentary places each selection in its own historical context then using essays and critical excerpt, the genre's most salient features are elucidated to provide a further understanding of its place in history.Extremely student friendly, this stands well both as a companion to Latin Erotic Elegy and in its own right as an invaluable fund of knowledge for any Latin literature scholar.

A wide variety of texts by the Latin satirists are presented here in a fully loaded resource to provide an innovative reading of satire's relation to Roman ideology.Brimming with notes, commentaries, essays and texts in translation, this book succeeds in its mission to help the student understand the history of Latin's modern scholarly reception.Focusing on the linguistic difficulties and problems of usage, and examining aspects of meter and style necessary for poetry appreciation, the commentary places each selection in its own historical context then using essays and critical excerpt, the genre's most salient features are elucidated to provide a further understanding of its place in history.Extremely student friendly, this stands well both as a companion to Latin Erotic Elegy and in its own right as an invaluable fund of knowledge for any Latin literature scholar.

It has seemed at times that there is no neutral territory between those who see Bakhtin as the practitioner of a kind of neo-Marxist, or at least materialist, deconstruction and those who look at the same texts and see a defender of traditional, liberal humanist values and classical conceptions of order, a conservative in the true sense of the term. Arising from a conference under the same title held at Texas Tech University, Carnivalizing Difference seeks to explore the actual and possible relationships between Bakhtinian theory and cultural practice. The introduction explores the changing configurations of our understanding of Bakhtin's work in the context of recent theory and outlines how that understanding can inform, and be informed by, culture both ancient and modern. Eleven articles, spanning a wide range of periods and cultural forms, then address these issues in detail, revealing the ways in which Bakhtinian thought illuminates, sometimes obfuscates, but always challenges.

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality.The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall).

The elegy flared into existence, commanded the cultural stage for several decades, then went extinct. This book accounts for the swift rise and sudden decline of a genre whose life span was incredibly brief relative to its impact. Examining every major poet from Catullus to Ovid, Subjecting Verses presents the first comprehensive history of Latin erotic elegy since Georg Luck's. Paul Allen Miller harmoniously weds close readings of the poetry with insights from theoreticians as diverse as Jameson, Foucault, Lacan, and Zizek. In welcome contrast to previous, thematic studies of elegy--efforts that have become bogged down in determining whether particular themes and poets were pro- or anti-Augustan--Miller offers a new, "symptomatic" history. He asks two obvious but rarely posed questions: what historical conditions were necessary to produce elegy, and what provoked its decline? Ultimately, he argues that elegiac poetry arose from a fundamental split in the nature of subjectivity that occurred in the late first century--a split symptomatic of the historical changes taking place at the time.Subjecting Verses is a major interpretive feat whose influence will reach across classics and literary studies. Linking the rise of elegy with changes in how Romans imagined themselves within a rapidly changing society, it offers a new model of literary theory that neither reduces the poems to a reflection of their context nor examines them in a vacuum.

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.This collection reclaims a vast body of long-neglected Latin texts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and examines how they represent the feminine and the female body. The authors explore the ideological values explicitly encoded by the feminine in these texts, other, less articulated values implied by the feminine, and the role of the classical tradition in communicating those values. The examination of women both as subjects and as rhetorical constructions in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature sheds light on the larger dialogue about feminism occurring throughout the humanities. In addition, the inclusion of a new body of texts and the rescue of others from their present isolation will expand the reach of classical and humanist scholarship.Traditional studies of Latin literature end around the beginning of the fifth century C.E. despite the fact that Latin continued to be the dominant literary and intellectual language until at least the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thus most classicists ignore over one thousand years of the Latin literary tradition. Few non-classicists read Latin comfortably and fewer still have a detailed understanding of the history of classical Latin literature. Nevertheless, a knowledge of this history was assumed by most Neo-Latin writers as well as their contemporaries who wrote in the vernacular. This collection supplies tools to examine more completely the construction and application of gender in both Latin and vernacular texts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Explores psychoanalytic approaches to cultural studies.Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis? What can this desire contribute to a vital cultural criticism? In Desire of the Analysts, these and other questions are addressed by leading contributors from a variety of fields, including Sharon Nell, Deneen Senasi, Kaja Silverman, Henry Sussman, Domietta Torlasco, Pierre Zoberman, and Slavoj Zðizûek. They argue for the urgency of a psychoanalytic criticism that is at once intellectually vibrant, politically engaged, and uniquely able to illuminate the psychic motivations and gratifications underlying a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. These phenomena include nationalistic violence, the formation of normative masculinity, the psychic appeal of domination and submission, and the place of the "queer" desire in counterhegemonic practices. The contributors explore the role of psychoanalysis in shaping the future of cultural criticism; elaborate on innovative ways to approach group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective; rethink psychoanalytic understandings of authorship; and offer original interpretations of the intersections between gender, sexuality, and domination. Desire of the Analysts demonstrates that psychoanalysis remains an indispensable resource for critiquing our contemporary condition.

The significance of Plato's Apology of Socrates is impossible to overestimate. An account of the famous trial of Socrates in 399 b.c., it appeals to historians, philosophers, political scientists, classicists, and literary critics. It is also essential reading for students of ancient Greek.This new commentary on Plato's canonical work is designed to accommodate the needs of students in intermediate-level Greek classes, where they typically encounter the Apology for the first time. Paul Allen Miller and Charles Platter, two highly respected classicists and veteran instructors, present the Apology in its traditional thirty-three-chapter structure. They amplify the text with running commentary and glosses of unfamiliar words at the bottom of each page; brief chapter introductions to relevant philosophical, historical, and rhetorical issues; and a separate series of thought-provoking essays, one on each chapter. The essays can serve as bases for class discussions or as starting points for paper topics or general reflection.By integrating background material into the text at regular intervals rather than front-loading it in a lengthy initial overview or burying it in back-of-the-book endnotes, the authors offer students a rich encounter with the text. Their commentary incorporates the latest research on both the trial of Socrates and Plato's version of it, and it engages major philosophical issues from a contemporary perspective. This book is not only a much-needed aid for students of Greek. It is also the basis of a complete course on the Apology.

Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness presents a model for studying the history of lyric as a genre. Prof Miller draws a distinction between the work of the Greek lyrists and the more condensed, personal poetry that we associate with lyric. He then confronts the theoretical issues and presents a sophisticated, Bakhtinian reading of the development of the lyric form from its origins in archaic Greece to the more individualist style of Augustan Rome. This book will appeal to classicists and, since English translations of passages from the ancient authors are provided, to those who specialise in comparative literature.

In 1980, Michel Foucault’s work makes two decisive turns. On the one hand, as announced at the start of his course at the Collège de France for that year, Le Gouvernement des vivants, his topic will be the modalities through which power constitutes itself in relation to truth. On the other, the texts on which he will concentrate will no longer be those of the early modern period. Rather, he begins with one by Dio Cassius on the emperor Septimius Severus and then proceeds to spend the next two sessions offering a reading of Oedipus Tyrannus. He will concentrate on works from antiquity for the rest of his life.This book will offer the first detailed account of these lectures, examining both the development of their philosophical argument and the ancient texts on which that argument is based. This is the period during which Foucault also began work on Volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Sexuality. Yet, while there are clear overlaps between the work he was presenting in his course and the last books he published before his death, nonetheless the seminars are anything but rough drafts for the published work. Instead they offer a sustained encounter with the texts of the classical and early Christian era while seeking to trace a genealogy of the western subject as a speaker of truth.

The first full treatment of truth as a core philosophical concept in the late Foucault, this volume examines his work on the ancient world and the early church. Each essay features a deep examination as to how the topics of truth and sexuality intersect with and focus on Foucault’s engagement with ancient philosophy and thought. Truth in the Late Foucault offers readings on Plato, Artemidorus, Cicero, Sophocles and the Stoics, and pays close attention to Cassian, Paulinus of Nola, and early Christian practices of confession.With the publication of the long-awaited volume 4 of the History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh, the shape of the final Foucault is now brought into stark relief. As well as looking at ancient thought, the contributors explore Foucault’s work in relation to philosophers such as Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Descartes. Foucault’s long-running and often contentious dialogue with psychoanalysis, on the relation between truth and the subject, is also examined. Each essay not only makes an important statement, but also is part of an interconnected arc of topics and understanding, covering both the ancient and modern periods. This book reveals that Foucault’s concern with antiquity raises questions deeply pertinent to the present moment.

The first full treatment of truth as a core philosophical concept in the late Foucault, this volume examines his work on the ancient world and the early church. Each essay features a deep examination as to how the topics of truth and sexuality intersect with and focus on Foucault’s engagement with ancient philosophy and thought. Truth in the Late Foucault offers readings on Plato, Artemidorus, Cicero, Sophocles and the Stoics, and pays close attention to Cassian, Paulinus of Nola, and early Christian practices of confession.With the publication of the long-awaited volume 4 of the History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh, the shape of the final Foucault is now brought into stark relief. As well as looking at ancient thought, the contributors explore Foucault’s work in relation to philosophers such as Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Descartes. Foucault’s long-running and often contentious dialogue with psychoanalysis, on the relation between truth and the subject, is also examined. Each essay not only makes an important statement, but also is part of an interconnected arc of topics and understanding, covering both the ancient and modern periods. This book reveals that Foucault’s concern with antiquity raises questions deeply pertinent to the present moment.

The first collection to provide an overview of the well-known psychoanalytic theory of the death drive in literary and cultural theory, this book features contributions from a range of prominent scholars working in the area of literature, philosophy, and psychanalysis.After Freud’s initial theorization, the death-drive has been re-interpreted by various psychoanalytic thinkers (including Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek), philosophers (Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard), political theorists (Judith Butler), queer theorists (Laurent Berlant, Lee Edelman), and posthumanists (Rosi Braidotti).This volume brings together some of the leading thinkers and theorists of the death-drive as a psychological, aesthetic, and theoretical principle in literary and cultural theory, examining texts by writers such as Plato, Henry James, and Ezra Pound.

In 1980, Michel Foucault’s work makes two decisive turns. On the one hand, as announced at the start of his course at the Collège de France for that year, Le Gouvernement des vivants, his topic will be the modalities through which power constitutes itself in relation to truth. On the other, the texts on which he will concentrate will no longer be those of the early modern period. Rather, he begins with one by Dio Cassius on the emperor Septimius Severus and then proceeds to spend the next two sessions offering a reading of Oedipus Tyrannus. He will concentrate on works from antiquity for the rest of his life.This book will offer the first detailed account of these lectures, examining both the development of their philosophical argument and the ancient texts on which that argument is based. This is the period during which Foucault also began work on Volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Sexuality. Yet, while there are clear overlaps between the work he was presenting in his course and the last books he published before his death, nonetheless the seminars are anything but rough drafts for the published work. Instead they offer a sustained encounter with the texts of the classical and early Christian era while seeking to trace a genealogy of the western subject as a speaker of truth.

Perhaps no classical writer has been so consistently in vogue as Horace. Famous in his own lifetime as a close associate of the Emperor Octavian, to whom he dedicated several odes, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BC) has never really been out of fashion. Petrarch, for example, modelled his letters on Horace’s innovative Epistles, while also borrowing from his Roman forebear in composing his own Italian sonnets. The echo of Horace’s voice can be found in almost every genre of medieval literature. And in later periods, this influence and popularity if anything increased. Yet, as Paul Allen Miller shows, while Horace may justifiably be called the poet for all seasons he is also in the end an enigma. His elusive, ironic contrariness is perhaps the true secret of his success. A cultured man of letters, he fought on the losing side of the Battle of Philippi (42 BC). A staunch Republican, he ended up eagerly (some said too eagerly) promoting the cause of Julio-Claudian imperialism. Viewed as the acme of Roman literary civilization, he was shaped by his Athens education at Plato’s famous Academy. This new introduction reveals Horace in all his paradoxical genius and complexity.

Perhaps no classical writer has been so consistently in vogue as Horace. Famous in his own lifetime as a close associate of the Emperor Octavian, to whom he dedicated several odes, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BC) has never really been out of fashion. Petrarch, for example, modelled his letters on Horace’s innovative Epistles, while also borrowing from his Roman forebear in composing his own Italian sonnets. The echo of Horace’s voice can be found in almost every genre of medieval literature. And in later periods, this influence and popularity if anything increased. Yet, as Paul Allen Miller shows, while Horace may justifiably be called the poet for all seasons he is also in the end an enigma. His elusive, ironic contrariness is perhaps the true secret of his success. A cultured man of letters, he fought on the losing side of the Battle of Philippi (42 BC). A staunch Republican, he ended up eagerly (some said too eagerly) promoting the cause of Julio-Claudian imperialism. Viewed as the acme of Roman literary civilization, he was shaped by his Athens education at Plato’s famous Academy. This new introduction reveals Horace in all his paradoxical genius and complexity.

Theory Does Not Exist: Comparative Ancient and Modern Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, and Rhetoric is a collection of essays that makes a strong case for a comparative approach to what we term “theory” today. It argues that our disciplinary boundaries create artificial divisions between philosophy, rhetoric, and literature, which historically would not have been recognized and which have come to function as conceptual straitjackets. These essays contend that a concerted engagement with the crucial texts in these debates over the last 2500 years not only offers a better understanding of the issues involved but also provides the necessary political, ethical, and existential tools for fashioning a better and more inclusive life. Theory Does Not Exist offers a full-throated defense of the humanities and crucial counterarguments against the reduction of education to the vocational and the operational.

Russian Literature and the Classics attempts to fill a gap. To date there has been no book-length, systematic study of the impact of antiquity on Russian literature and culture. While by no means claiming to offer a comprehensive approach, the authors focus on various aspects of the influence which the Classics have had on Russian literature at particularly significant junctures - the beginning of the nineteenth century; the age of the great Russian realist novel; the "Silver Age"; Stalin's terror; the "Thaw" after 1956; and the period just before the collapse of Soviet society. In their introductory essay the editors offer an overview of the Classical Tradition. In it, they provide an insight into the contrasting ways in which that tradition manifested itself in the literatures of Western Europe and of Russia.

Explores psychoanalytic approaches to cultural studies.Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis? What can this desire contribute to a vital cultural criticism? In Desire of the Analysts, these and other questions are addressed by leading contributors from a variety of fields, including Sharon Nell, Deneen Senasi, Kaja Silverman, Henry Sussman, Domietta Torlasco, Pierre Zoberman, and Slavoj Zðizûek. They argue for the urgency of a psychoanalytic criticism that is at once intellectually vibrant, politically engaged, and uniquely able to illuminate the psychic motivations and gratifications underlying a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. These phenomena include nationalistic violence, the formation of normative masculinity, the psychic appeal of domination and submission, and the place of the "queer" desire in counterhegemonic practices. The contributors explore the role of psychoanalysis in shaping the future of cultural criticism; elaborate on innovative ways to approach group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective; rethink psychoanalytic understandings of authorship; and offer original interpretations of the intersections between gender, sexuality, and domination. Desire of the Analysts demonstrates that psychoanalysis remains an indispensable resource for critiquing our contemporary condition.