Russell M. Hillier
Professor
Education:
Ph.D. - Cambridge University
M.A. - Oxford University
B.A. - Oxford University
Area(s) of Expertise:
Primary: Early Modern Literature, including John Milton, William Shakespeare, George Herbert, John Donne, Lucy Hutchinson, Edmund Spenser, and Andrew Marvell; epic; lyric; tragedy; religion & literature; philosophy & literature.
Secondary: Classical Greek and Roman Literature; Romanticism; Russian literature; Cormac McCarthy.
Selected Publications:
Hillier, R. (2024) “Poison May Lurk at the Bottom": The Ruin of Jacob Vaark and Paradise Already Lost in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Orbis Litterarum.(79), 576-98.
Hillier, R. (2024) A Literary Forerunner to Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: S. Behrman in Frank Norris’s The Octopus. ANQ.(37), 625-31.
Hillier, R. (2024) Reading and Reworking the Bard in Amherst, Massachusetts: Allusions to William Shakespeare’s Tragedies in Three of Emily Dickinson’s Poems. ANQ.(37), 566-73.
Hillier, R. (2024) “An Enormous Sadness Touched with Rue": Nietzsche and the Pathos of Oneness in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree.”. Orbis Litterarum .(79), 432-48.
Hillier, R. (2024) “Things Can Always Get Worse": Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the Comitragic Arc of the Mussel-Brailing Interlude on the French Broad River in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree.. ANQ 37.3 (2024): 439-45. .(37), 439-45.
Hillier, R. (2024) “Nothing’s Forever": Destruction, Creation, Connection, and Miltonic Influence in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris. English Studies.(105), 142-72.
Hillier, R. (2024) “The Coming Darkness": Romantic Tragedy, Shakespeare, and Nahua Myth in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris. The Cormac McCarthy Journal.(22), 9-35.
Hillier, R. (2024) The Quadrant and the Sextant: Taking the Measure of the Cosmos in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. ANQ.(37), 201-06.
Hillier, R. (2024) Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Horace’s Ars Poetica, Lines 179-88: Nelly Dean as Tragic Nuntius. Brontë Studies.(49), 24-37.
Hillier, R. (2023) "All Souls Are One": The Idea of Unanimity in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. Notes & Queries.(70), 316-21.
Hillier, R. (2023) "Her Eyes Were Huge and Hungered": Mother Love and the Decline of Rinthy Holme in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark. ANQ.(36), 123-27.
Hillier, R. (2023) Cain Furens: Imitations of Virgil and Ovid in Canto Six of Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder. Literature & Theology.(37), 93-118.
Hillier, R. (2023) From Dublin, Ireland, to Vestal, Tennessee: Snowfall and Memory in James Joyce’s "The Dead" and the Third Part of Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. ANQ.(36), 281-87.
Hillier, R. (2023) The Underthought of John Milton’s Samson Agonistes in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s "My own heart let me more have pity on". The Explicator.(81), 54-59.
Hillier, R. (2023) “Hang Loose": The Ethos and Influence of Oceanfrog Frazer in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. English Studies.(104), 1447-68.
Hillier, R. (2023) “See / How I convey my shame out of thine eyes": Breathing Dramatic Life into an Ancient Proverb in William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, III.xi.51-4. Notes & Queries.(69), 293-97.
Hillier, R. (2022) Lucretius, Seneca the Younger, Aulus Gellius, Justus Lipsius, and Shakespeare: The Reshaping of a Classical Topos in The Tempest. ANQ.(35), 108-12.
Hillier, R. (2022) Shadowing Culla Holme in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark. ANQ.(35), 471-74.
Hillier, R. (2022) “Cold Enough for Ye?": The Chilling Effect of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. ANQ.(35), 301-07.
Hillier, R. (2022) “Then I wouldn’t be unneighborly neither": A Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper in Light of the Influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Ethan Brand.". English Studies.(103), 267-96.
Hillier, R. (2021) "Monsters worse to come": A Reconsideration of the Influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein upon Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. The Explicator.(79), 104-10.
Hillier, R. (2021) "The Flitting Phantoms of Iniquity": A Source for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Fancy’s Show-Box: A Morality" in the Ninth Canto of Book Two of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Notes & Queries.(68), 296-99.
Hillier, R. Reeder, R. (2021) Combined Lights: Comparative Essays on the Poetry and Prose of John Donne and George Herbert. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2021
Hillier, R. (2021) The Significance of Dunsinane in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Ireland, George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. ANQ.(34), 105-10.
Hillier, R. (2021) “Ever man loves peace and a old man best of all": Revisiting Uncle Arthur "Ather" Ownby and the Government Tank in Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. English Studies.(102), 735-58.
Hillier, R. (2019) Comparable Apocalypses of Barrenness and Superabundance: Seneca’s Phaedra and John Milton’s Comus, or A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. Notes & Queries.(66), 535-37.
Hillier, R. (2019) The Purpose of Lutheran and Kafkaesque References in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited. ANQ.(32), 199-203.
Hillier, R. (2018) Immediacy in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. English Studies.(99), 854-77.
Hillier, R. (2018) Two Men in a Trickbag: White, Black, and the Operation of Schopenhauerian Ethics in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited. The Cormac McCarthy Journal.(16), 104-32.
Hillier, R. (2017) Morality in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction: Souls at Hazard. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
Hillier, R. (2016) Herbert’s Pepper Corn: Responsibility and Reciprocity in The Temple. Christianity & Literature.(66), 109-38.
Hillier, R. (2016) ‘Like some supplicant to the darkness over them all’: The Good of John Grady Cole in Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain. The Cormac McCarthy Journal.(14), 3-36.
Hillier, R. (2016) ‘Send back thy fire again’: Praise, Music, and Poetry in the Lyrics of George Herbert. The Modern Language Review.(111), 633-64.
Hillier, R. (2016) ‘Strange Love’: The Question of Innotescence in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. Cithara.(56), 3-27.
Hillier, R. (2016) ‘Th’action fine’: The Good of Works in George Herbert’s Poetry and Prose. Renascence.(68), 3-26.
Hillier, R. (2016) ‘Valour Will Weep’: The Ethics of Valor, Anger, and Pity in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Studies in Philology .(113), 358-96.
Hillier, R. (2015) 'Tyes of Gratefulness’: Learning to Say Thank You in George Herbert’s Lyrics. English.(64), 268-92.
Hillier, R. (2015) ‘Each the Other’s World Entire’: Intertextuality and the Worth of Textual Remembrance in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. English Studies.(96), 670-89.
Hillier, R. (2014) ‘A Happy Rural Seat of Various View’: Eve’s Mirror Poem and Her Lapse in Paradise Lost. Milton Quarterly.(48), 1-14.
Hillier, R. (2014) ‘A Wondrous Lesson in Thy Silent Face’: Keats, Darwin, and the Geological Sublime. Arcadia: International Journal of Literary Culture.(49), 254-84.
Hillier, R. (2014) ‘Nor Hell a Fury’: Malkina’s Motivation in Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor. The Explicator.(72), 151-57.
Hillier, R. (2014) In John D. Cox and Patrick Gray (Ed.), Hamlet the Rough-hewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014
Hillier, R. (2013) The Judge’s Molar: Infanticide and the Meteorite in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. ANQ.(26), 76-81.
Hillier, R. (2012) Adam’s Error (Paradise Lost 11.315-33). The Explicator.(70), 128-32.
Hillier, R. (2012) Doped Malice in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Notes & Queries.(59), 176-78.
Hillier, R. (2011) Milton’s Messiah. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011
Hillier, R. (2011) ‘So Shall the World Goe on’: A Providentialist Reading of Books Eleven and Twelve of Paradise Lost. English Studies.(92), 1-27.
Hillier, R. (2010) Crystal Beards and Dantean Influence in Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire’ (II). ANQ.(23), 172-78.
Hillier, R. (2010) Milton’s ‘Genial Angel’: The Identity and Salvific Office of the Son in Adam’s Narrative of Creation and Recreation. Studies in Philology .(107), 366-400.
Hillier, R. (2009) Coleridge’s Dilemma and the Method of ‘Sacred Sympathy’: Atonement as Problem and Solution in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Papers on Language and Literature .(45), 8-36.
Hillier, R. (2009) Milton’s Dantean Miniatures: Inflections of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio within the Cosmos of Paradise Lost. Notes & Queries.(56), 215-19.
Hillier, R. (2009) Spatial Allegory and Creation Old and New in Milton’s Hexaemeral Narrative. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900.(49), 121-43.
Hillier, R. (2009) ‘By Force or Fraud / Weening to Prosper’: Milton’s Satanic and Messianic Modes of Heroism. Milton Quarterly.(43), 17-38.
Hillier, R. (2009) ‘O What a Mask Was There, What a Disguise!’: The Mechanism of Satanic Defeat in Paradise Regained. Milton Studies.(49), 167-91.
Hillier, R. (2008) The Good Communicated: Milton’s Drama of the Fall and the Law of Charity. The Modern Language Review.(103), 1-21..
Hillier, R. (2008) The Wreath, the Rock, and the Winepress: Passion Iconography in Milton’s Paradise Regain’d. Literature & Theology.(22), 387-405.
Hillier, R. (2008) ‘Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion Signe’: The Conjunction of Astrology and Apocalyptic in Milton’s Psychostasis. The Cambridge Quarterly.(37), 305-23.
Hillier, R. (2007) Milton’s Paradise Regain’d and Herbert’s ‘Love’ (III). The Explicator.(66), 4-9.
Hillier, R. (2007) The Patience to Prevent That Murmur: The Theodicy of John Milton’s Nineteenth Sonnet . Renascence.(59), 247-73.
Hillier, R. (2007) To Say it with Flowers: Milton’s ‘Immortal Amarant’ Reconsidered (Paradise Lost 3.349-61). Notes & Queries.(54), 404-08.
Hillier, R. (2006) Hugo Grotius’s Christus Patiens and John Milton’s Samson Agonistes. The Explicator.(65), 9-13.
Hillier, R. (2006) Two Patristic Sources for John Milton’s Description of the Sun (Paradise Lost 3.591-95). Notes & Queries.(53), 184-87.
Hillier, R. (2006) ‘In a Dark Parody’ of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: The Presence of Subversive Allegory in Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark. ANQ.(19), 52-59.
Selected Presentations:
Hillier, R. The Biennial Conference of the Cormac McCarthy Society: The Legacy of Cormac McCarthy. , Knoxville, Tennessee - ""Bending Toward Justice? Masons False and True in The Stonemason"" October, 2024
Hillier, R. The American Literature Association Annual Conference. , Boston, Massachusetts - "“‘In the Grip of Grue’: Visions of Horror in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree” " , 2023
Hillier, R. The American Literature Association Annual Conference. . , Boston, Massachusetts - "“Approaches to McCarthy’s New Novels The Passenger and Stella Maris.”" , 2023
Hillier, R. The Annual Conference of the British Shakespeare Association. . , University of Liverpool, England. - "“‘Handy-dandy’: Re-locating the Bastard Condition in King Lear.” " , 2023
Hillier, R. The Biannual Conference of the Cormac McCarthy Society. , Savannah, Georgia - "“‘A whole new style seemed to be seeking expression here’: McCarthy’s Trade of Wonder, or Standing a Stone in Suttree.” " , 2022
Hillier, R. The Annual Conference of the British Shakespeare Association. , Swansea University, Wales - "'To the Whole Race of Mankind, High and Low!': Hating Timon" , 2019
Hillier, R. The 33rd Annual John Donne Society Conference. , The University of Lausanne, Switzerland - "Immediacy in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet ‘If faithful souls be alike glorified’" , 2018
Hillier, R. The Cormac McCarthy Society Conference. , Austin, Texas - "Two Men in a Trick Bag in Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited" , 2017
Hillier, R. The American Literature Association Symposium: Frontiers and Borders in American Literature. , San Antonio, Texas - "‘Like some supplicant to the darkness over them all’: The Good of John Grady Cole in Cities of the Plain." February, 2016
Hillier, R. The Twenty-sixth Annual Conference of the American Literature Association. , Boston, Massachusetts - "‘A knowing deep in the bone’: Stoicism and Tragic Heroism in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses." May, 2015
Hillier, R. The Annual Conference of the British Shakespeare Association. , The University of Stirling, Scotland - "'What's the Matter?': The Authentic Coriolanus" July, 2014
Hillier, R. American Literature Association. , Washington, DC - "'Each the Other’s World Entire': The Use of Ovid in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road" May, 2014
Hillier, R. George Herbert Society. , Grove City, PA - "'To Bubbles Straight' or 'Making Two One'?: Learning to Say Thank You in George Herbert’s Lyrics" April, 2013
Hillier, R. Cormac McCarthy Society. , Berea, KY - "The Judge's Molar: Infanticide and the Meteorite in Blood Meridian" March, 2013
Hillier, R. Renaissance Society of America. , Washington, DC - "Some Permutations of Edenic Catalogues in Milton's Paradise Lost: Eve's Lapse and Adam's Error" March, 2012
Hillier, R. The Conference on John Milton. , Murfreesboro, TN - "'And ever best found in the close': The Concluding Lines of Paradise Lost (12.588-649)" October, 2011
