Dreams of the Burning Child

David Lee Miller is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 'Faerie Queene' as well as coeditor of several books, including The Production of English Renaissance Culture, also from Cornell.

• Introduction : the body of fatherhood -- The deified father and the sacrificial son -- Virgil's Aeneid : the history of a wound -- Witnessing as theater in Shakespeare -- Charles Dickens : a dead hand at a baby -- Jonson, Freud, and Lacan : this moving dream -- Mourning patriarchy : a return to the crossroads.

Miller's book functions as an imaginative structure and does so quite beautifully.(Rocky Mountain Review) In this fine book, Miller traces an ensemble of motifs, particularly the boy/old man and the father's witness, across Western culture from its emergence in the 'aqedah' (the binding of Isaac) through Virgil and Shakespeare to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.... Miller writes lucid prose and illuminates a cultural narrative that will appeal to students of literature, philosophy, anthropology, religion, and gender. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.(Choice) Miller's study is extremely satisfying to read, and his points are well-made and viable. He presents supporting evidence for his thesis in a logical and measured fashion, and proves himself capable of textual analysis of sources ranging widely across temporal and cultural boundaries.- Emily Morgan (Art History)