1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

he was the exemplar of Renaissance literature and action. He was the combination of all
the virtues of the time. He, unfortunately, died at an early age in battle in the Lowlands
against the Spanish. So my interest in Sidney was kind of a dedication and admiration for
the kind of life he led.
Q: What was his period?
MILLER: 1580. He was Elizabethan, late Elizabethan. 1580 – he died in 1593.
Q: What battle was it?
MILLER: The battle of Zutphen, in the Lowlands against the Spanish. One of those freak
accidents – a shot, a ball went into his thigh and he got an incurable infection. I was
working primarily on Renaissance literature, but I also was reading and studying
American literature with Fred Dupee. I don’t know if you know that name.
Q: I’ve heard the name.
MILLER: Yes, he was a visiting professor from Columbia. Fred Dupee, became a close
friend and was a very important influence. He was a great New York critic. He was one of
the key writers on the Partisan Review. He had been, after graduating from Yale, a
Communist in the early ‘30s along with many of the Partisan Review people who later in
1936 turned against the Communists particularly after the purges. After the purges of
1936 they all went the other way – staunch anti-communists. Dupee was a wonderfully
sophisticated New York intellectual who was brought up in Joliet, Illinois. Dupee was a
great friend of Mary McCarthy’s, so through him I met many of the poets and writers that
I admired: Robert Lowell, plus Mary McCarthy, and Louise Bogan, Philip Roth, Saul
Bellow and Gore Vidal. So the literary life and scholarly life at Harvard was something
that was appealing. There were other great scholars like Rosamund Tuve, who was a
Spencerian, from Connecticut College, a great scholar. Douglas Bush was my thesis
advisor, and Bill Alfred was also a thesis advisor. He was a very good poet as well as one
of the best scholars of Irish literature. Harvard was rich in contemporary poetry from
Yeats and Eliot to Lowell and David Ferry.
Q: The deeper you get into literature it would seem the farther you’d be getting away
from this other side of the fact that you were on hold for the Foreign Service. Were you
being able to sup at any of the international experience at Harvard?
MILLER: Oh, yes, of course, because the deeper you get into a serious literature the more
you understand that it’s about the key events of the time, and by extension and example,
of anytime. Whether it’s Homer, or whether its Auden, or Robert Lowell – they are
talking about the big events – politics, ethics and how life should be led, what kind of
government there should be, what’s right and what’s wrong. Actually it’s the deep study
of literature that drew me back into public life.
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