William Cook Miller

Academic. Seventeenth-century literature and religion. Michigander (displaced). Terrible twitter timing.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

@davidsirota This caused me to turn off the internet for a day. Thank you. I am addicted to YouTube in particular, which works for me because there are, in fact, lots of good YouTube videos, but the benefit of watching such videos is not worth the cost of having watched them all day.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

America, where the most expensive medical system in the world can't treat patients, and the most expensive army in the world can't win wars.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

My wife accidentally dropped an F bomb while driving with our 3 y.o. A few beats later the kid repeats the word. She explains, "Honey, I shouldn't have used that word, and you should not repeat it." 3 y.o. thinks for a second, then says, "But I like foxes."

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

In short, Trump is not "Mad" Lear. He is closer to "sane" Lear, a baby surrounded by cynical sycophants. Lear was a baby, but becomes a visionary when "mad." Trump debases everything he touches. But our poor excuse for an informed culture debases everything it references. 5/5

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

The Wire sent this up nicely in Season Five, with the moronic newspaper editor who constantly asked for Dickensian stories (and ended up attracting a serial plagiarist who fed him fictions). We have only sunk since then. 4/

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

The reason this matters: we are warming our discourse with the shreds and tatters of a once profound and nuanced literary culture. We don't bother to read or understand the things that would most inform our opinions. Instead, we grope blindly for a reference. 3/

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

Lear's madness culminates in one of the most beautiful condemnations of unequal justice I've ever read. “Plate sin with gold, / And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. / Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.” Does that sound like Trump? 2/

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

The constant comparisons of Trump to King Lear are so inane. Yeah, King Lear goes "mad." But his kind of madness couldn't be further from Trump's paranoid bunker infancy. Lear's madness is sublime. It represents the rupture of infancy -- 1/

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

@DylanoA4 @TUnroll

[Cornell University Press @CornellPress]

It's officially publication day for our July 2023 books! Dig into something new.

Featuring work by Michael T. Friedman, @ScribnerUMCP, @josephscalice, and @WillCookMiller.

#NewBooks #CornellUniversityPress #CornellPress

View all titles: https://t.co/CXmdVgopEv

[Cornell University Press @CornellPress]

New on the #SageHouseBlog!

@WillCookMiller, author of The Enthusiast: Anatomy of the Fanatic in Seventeenth-Century British Culture, answers our questions.

#Fanaticism #EarlyModernists #Enlightenment #Puritanism #NewBooks #CornellPress

Read now: https://t.co/OIspFzQHlP

[Theology Books @theology_books]

The Enthusiast
Anatomy of the #Fanatic in Seventeenth-Century #British Culture

WILLIAM COOK MILLER @WillCookMiller

@CornellPress #Book #England #Religion #Literature
https://t.co/6JmwcuaHKo

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

The End of the Star System https://t.co/jNlFErRhMl

A beautiful slice of agony -- should be subtitled "the cessation of the oracles" instead.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

https://t.co/tEYZX1lymG

Is there a term for the aesthetic hypersensitivity that creeps up on you from time to time?

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

Musical Elitism is Everywhere https://t.co/oMfLIgB0w7 via @YouTube

Still have a tiny grudge against this YouTuber for hating on Bing Crosby and David Bowie's "Little Drummer Boy," but this is pure gold.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

Parental epiphany 1: Aren’t we all just itsy bitsy spiders?

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

@BeineckeLibrary *Social. Hughes was a Missouri/NYC guy.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

https://t.co/4UXt5ed6kw

The Enthusiast is a foodie these days.

[William Cook Miller @WillCookMiller]

@NoLuckLopez Freud.