This article presents a remediated transcript of The Pleasure of That Obstinacy, a documentary-interview in which J. Hillis Miller reflects on the place of Anthony Trollope in his thinking and writing. Miller first considers how his views on Trollope were shaped by the critics Georges Poulet and Paul de Man, and dwells on the way in which the study of literature differs from and intersects with the sciences. Moving further back in time, the interview turns to Miller's first encounter with literature. This section segues into a discussion of the interpretation of moving images. In conclusion, Miller reflects on the value of literature in an ecologically fragile world that has been altered fundamentally by modern forms of media and technology.

In Victorian Britain, the consolidation of capitalism and the absence of bureaucracy had a huge and unsettling impact on politics and culture. This paper argues that the Victorian novelist, like the public moralist, provided a solution to this crisis by forming a construction of the individual as a rational and emotional citizen and of a state adequately representing this citizen. The study’s objective is to examine the details of this construction inPhineas Finn(1869), a novel by Anthony Trollope (1815–1882); it identifies, analyzes and interprets the discourses of subject formation, politics, and character. The method used draws on the work of Paul de Man and is inductive, descriptive and rhetorical.

Article 25fa pilot End User AgreementThis publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet) with explicit consent by the author. Dutch law entitles the maker of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work.This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' pilot project. In this pilot research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication.You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyrights owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication other than authorised under this licence or copyright law is prohibited.If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please contact the Library through email:

Although certain works published in the fin-de-siècle journal Cosmopolis: An International Review (1896–8) would have a lasting impact on twentieth-century literature, the principles behind its design have escaped critical attention. This article posits that Cosmopolis anticipated a form of modernism that Walter Benjamin would later conceptualise in his ‘Critique of Violence’ (1921) and ‘The Task of the Translator’ (1923). The interplay between Benjamin's two essays suggests that translation allows one to reach a nonviolent resolution of conflict through language: a translation's mediation between an original work and pure language presents a nonviolent form of coexistence. The editors and writers of Cosmopolis had already put this idea into practice: a significant number of contributors wrote in a language that was not their own, while those who did write in their own language addressed a non-native audience. The geopolitical implications of this multilingual approach come to the fore most emphatically in a case of pseudo-translation that deals with the case of Alsace-Lorraine. More subtly, the periodical creates echoes and reverberations between articles on international politics and works of literature. Through these translational practices, Cosmopolis was designed to foster a ‘diplomatic’ form of cosmopolitanism, a fact highlighted by the diplomatic credentials of a number of contributors, including the main editor, and thematised in short stories by Joseph Conrad and Henry James.

Article 25fa pilot End User AgreementThis publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet) with explicit consent by the author. Dutch law entitles the maker of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work.This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' pilot project. In this pilot research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication.You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyrights owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication other than authorised under this licence or copyright law is prohibited.If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website.