Peter Miller is a scholar of English-language poetry from Romanticism to the present, with particular interests in sound and rhythm, music, and media studies.
Research Interests
Peter’s first book, Poetry, Sound, and the Matter of Prosody, 1800-2000 (Oxford, 2025), makes the case for conceiving prosodic analysis as a form of media theory. He is currently working on two new book projects. The first studies a group of contemporary anglophone poets—Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, Patience Agbabi, and Daljit Nagra—who have reimagined canonical western texts within global and postcolonial frameworks. The second book project considers the role poetry has played in the modern novel, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.
Publications
Articles
“Master Meter: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, and the History of Lyric.” Critical Inquiry 51.3 (Spring 2025): 558-578.
“Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf and the Limits of Lyric.” Modern Philology 122.2 (November 2024): 286-307.
“Wallace Stevens, Music Technology, and the Resonance of Poetry.” Modern Language Quarterly 85.3 (September 2024): 279-301.
“Patience Agbabi, The Canterbury Tales, and Polyhistorical Form.” English Literary History 91.1 (Spring 2024): 263-284.
“Prosody, Media, and the Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.” PMLA 135.2 (March 2020): 315-328.
“William Wordsworth and the Invention of Culture.” Studies in English Literature 58.4 (Autumn 2018): 809-831.
Chapters in Edited Collections
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” in The Poetry of Bob Dylan: Thirty Essays on Thirty Songs, ed. Mike Chasar. Forthcoming September 2025 from Bloomsbury Publishing.
Courses Taught
- ENG 736 Lyric and Its Media
Education
B.A. English Language and Literature, Goshen College (2009)
Ph.D. English Language and Literature, University of Virginia Main Campus (2019)
Recognitions
- Ph.D. English, University of Virginia, 2019