Perry Miller - Wikipedia Perry Miller From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search For the ice hockey player, see Perry Miller (ice hockey). Perry Gilbert Eddy Miller (February 25, 1905 – December 9, 1963) was an American intellectual historian and a co-founder of the field of American Studies.[1] Miller specialized in the history of early America, and took an active role in a revisionist view of the colonial Puritan theocracy that was cultivated at Harvard University beginning in the 1920s. Heavy drinking led to his premature death at the age of fifty-eight.[2] "Perry Miller was a great historian of Puritanism but the dark conflicts of the Puritan mind eroded his own mental stability." [3] Contents 1 Life 2 Death from alcoholism 3 Historiography 4 Influence 5 Legacy 6 Books 7 Notes 8 References Life[edit] Miller was born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and began teaching at Harvard University in 1931. In 1942, Miller resigned his post at Harvard to join the United States Army; he was stationed in Great Britain for the duration of the war, where he worked for the Office of Strategic Services. Miller may have been instrumental in creating the Psychological Warfare Branch of the O.S.S.; certainly he worked for the PWB for the duration of the war.[4] After 1945, Miller returned to teaching at Harvard. He also offered courses at the Harvard Extension School.[5] Miller wrote book reviews and articles in The Nation and The American Scholar. In his long-awaited biography of Jonathan Edwards, published in 1949, Miller argues that Edwards was actually an artist working in the only medium available to him in the 18th century American frontier, namely that of religion and theology. His posthumously published The Life of the Mind in America, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize, was the first installment of a projected 10-volume series.[6] Miller spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey on a Guggenheim Fellowship and also taught in Japan for a year. Death from alcoholism[edit] He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts of acute pancreatitis stemming from his longstanding alcohol use disorder.[7] By some, especially within the Harvard community, his death was mourned as a loss to America's intellectual landscape.[8] Historiography[edit] Hollinger (1968) explores the philosophical basis of Miller's historiography, arguing that Miller's formulation of problems was controlled by tensions between 'conscious' and 'mechanical' and between 'understanding' and 'mystery.' For Miller, the mechanical world was devoid of morality and purpose, and was incompatible with conscious beauty and ethics. By contrast, within the 'conscious' realm the drive for knowledge about an intelligible universe controlled by laws vied with the opposite religious faith in an unknowable universe controlled by God. Miller's history was further deepened by his emphasis on development: he sees history as proceeding in a continuing series of interactions between traditional cultural forms and immediate environmental circumstances. For Miller, culture is never merely the product of the environment, but an active agent in the interaction. The search for 'historical knowledge' itself proceeds on the terms of this interaction. Miller rejected both positivism and the relativism of Carl Becker for the harder relativism later developed by Thomas Kuhn. That is, for Miller 'forms' are neither wholly arbitrary nor entirely discovered in 'the facts,' but are instead the inheritance and creation of the historian, altered and confirmed by his experience.[9] Influence[edit] Miller's attempts to discover and to reveal the religious feelings and the religious ideas set a new standard for intellectual historiography.[10] Historians report that Miller's work has influenced the work of later historians on topics ranging from Puritan studies to discussions of narrative theory. In his most famous book, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939), Miller adopted a cultural approach to illuminate the worldview of the Puritans, unlike previous historians who employed psychological and economic explanations of their beliefs and behavior.[11] Legacy[edit] At Harvard, he directed numerous Ph.D. dissertations. His most notable students were fellow Pulitzer winners Bernard Bailyn and Edmund Morgan.[12] Margaret Atwood dedicated The Handmaid's Tale to Perry Miller. Atwood had studied with Miller while attending Radcliffe before women were admitted to Harvard.[13][14] Books[edit] 1933. Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650[15] 1939. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century [16] 1949. Jonathan Edwards[17] 1950. The Transcendentalists: An Anthology[18] 1953. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province[19] 1953. Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition[20] 1954. Religion and Freedom of Thought 1954. American Thought: Civil War to World War I[21] 1956. Errand into the Wilderness[22] 1956. The American Puritans (editor) [23] 1957. The American Transcendentalists: Their Prose and Poetry[24] 1957. The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville and the New York Literary Scene[25] 1958. Consciousness in Concord: The Text of Thoreau's Hitherto “Lost Journal” 1961. The Legal Mind in America: From Independence to the Civil War 1965. Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War [26] 1967. Nature's Nation[27] Notes[edit] ^ Murray G. Murphey, "Perry Miller and American Studies," American Studies Summer 2001, Vol. 42 Issue 2, pp 5-18 ^ David Levin, Exemplary Elders (Athens GA, 1990) p. 36 ^ Niel Gunson, Telling Pacific lives: prisms of process (2008) p 8,14, ISBN 9781921313813 ^ Middlekauff, "Perry Miller," pp 168-9 ^ Shinagel, Michael (2010), The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910–2009, Harvard University Press, p. 52, ISBN 978-0674051355 ^ Kelly Boyd, Encyclopedia of historians and historical writing: Volume 2 (1999) p. 818 ^ "...doctors had warned him several years earlier that alcohol gravely threatened his life..." Levin, Exemplary Elders, p.36 ^ Alan Heimert, "Perry Miller: An Appreciation," Harvard Review, II, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1964), 30-48 ^ David A. Hollinger, "Perry Miller and Philosophical History," History and Theory, May 1968, Vol. 7 Issue 2, pp 189-202 ^ Stanford J. Searl Jr., "Perry Miller As Artist: Piety and Imagination in the New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century," Early American Literature, Dec 1977, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp 221-33 ^ Robert Middlekauff, "Perry Miller," in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters pp 167-90 ^ Perry Miller, Errand into the wilderness (1956) Page ix ^ PEARY, GERALD (1990-03-04). "'The Handmaid's Tale' : If Puritans Ruled . . . Atwood's Story on Screen". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ "Book Review". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ Perry Miller (1933-01-01). Orthodoxy in massachusetts 1630 1950. Beacon Press. ^ "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century - 1954, Page iii by Perry Miller, Perry Miller , P. M. . - Online Research Library: Questia". www.questia.com. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ Miller, Perry (2005-01-01). Jonathan Edwards. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803283075. ^ Miller, Perry (1950-01-01). The Transcendentalists: An Anthology. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674903333. ^ Perry Miller (1953-01-01). The New England Mind From Colony To Province. Beacon Press. ^ Miller, Perry (1970-01-01). Roger Williams: his contribution to the American tradition. Atheneum. ^ Miller, Perry (1954-01-01). American thought: Civil War to World War I. Rinehart. ^ "Errand into the Wilderness — Perry Miller - Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ "The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry - 1956, Page iii - Online Research Library: Questia". www.questia.com. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ Miller, Perry (1957-01-01). The American transcendentalists, their prose and poetry. Doubleday. ^ "Perry Miller: The Raven and the Whale". prezi.com. Retrieved 2016-03-25. ^ Miller, Perry (1965-01-01). The life of the mind in America: from the Revolution to the Civil War : books one through three. ^ Miller, Perry (1967-01-01). Nature's nation. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. References[edit] Butts, Francis T. "The Myth of Perry Miller," American Historical Review, June 1982, Vol. 87 Issue 3, pp 665–94; Seeks to rehabilitate Miller's interpretation of Puritanism Fuller, Randall. "Errand into the Wilderness: Perry Miller as American Scholar," American Literary History, Spring 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1, pp 102–128 Guyatt, Nicholas. "'An Instrument of National Policy': Perry Miller and the Cold War," Journal of American Studies, April 2002, Vol. 36 Issue 1, pp 107–49 Hollinger, David A. "Perry Miller and Philosophical History," History and Theory, Vol. 7, issue 2, 1968, 189-202 Heimert, Alan. "Perry Miller: An Appreciation," Harvard Review, II, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1964), 30-48 Middlekauff, Robert. "Perry Miller," in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters (1969) pp 167–90 Reinitz, Richard. "Perry Miller and Recent American Historiography," Bulletin of the British Association of American Studies, 8 (June 1964), 27-35 Searl Jr., Stanford J. "Perry Miller As Artist: Piety and Imagination in the New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century," Early American Literature, Dec 1977, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp 221–33 Tucker, Bruce. "Early American Intellectual History after Perry Miller," Canadian Review of American Studies, 1982, Vol. 13 Issue 2, pp 145–157 v t e Pulitzer Prize for History (1951–1975) R. Carlyle Buley (1951) Oscar Handlin (1952) George Dangerfield (1953) Bruce Catton (1954) Paul Horgan (1955) Richard Hofstadter (1956) George F. Kennan (1957) Bray Hammond (1958) Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider (1959) Margaret Leech (1960) Herbert Feis (1961) Lawrence H. Gipson (1962) Constance McLaughlin Green (1963) Sumner Chilton Powell (1964) Irwin Unger (1965) Perry Miller (1966) William H. Goetzmann (1967) Bernard Bailyn (1968) Leonard Levy (1969) Dean Acheson (1970) James MacGregor Burns (1971) Carl Neumann Degler (1972) Michael Kammen (1973) Daniel J. Boorstin (1974) Dumas Malone (1975) Complete list 1917–1925 1926–1950 1951–1975 1976–2000 2001–2025 Authority control BIBSYS: 90056945 BNF: cb12322209h (data) CANTIC: a1160573x CiNii: DA00606467 GND: 12944023X ISNI: 0000 0001 0870 5003 LCCN: n50033202 LNB: 000123634 NDL: 00877004 NKC: kup19960000065582 NLA: 35353199 NLI: 000206631 NSK: 000057549 NTA: 068290691 PLWABN: 9810557693905606 RERO: 02-A003595680 SELIBR: 286085 SNAC: w6c25n0p SUDOC: 032133081 Trove: 922706 VIAF: 12377715 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50033202 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Perry_Miller&oldid=999428572" Categories: 1905 births 1963 deaths American literary critics Historians of Puritanism University of Chicago alumni Pulitzer Prize for History winners Harvard University faculty Writers from Chicago 20th-century American historians Historians from Illinois Harvard Extension School faculty Alcohol-related deaths in Massachusetts Intellectual historians Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NSK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with RERO identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages العربية Čeština Deutsch Français 한국어 Italiano Edit links This page was last edited on 10 January 2021, at 03:19 (UTC). 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