Arthur Miller

11 4.2

An American playwright who wrote Death of a Salesman and The Crucible

proper noun
/ˈɑrθər ˈmɪlər/

: Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller is renowned for his play Arthur Miller, which explores themes of morality and justice.
Arthur Miller, the playwright

Examples

Many consider Arthur Miller to be one of the most influential American playwrights of the 20th century.
The following excerpt from Arthur Miller's The Crucible shows how devices of repetition like epistrophe can double as devices of emotion:

Academic text (1997)
And Cummings was still alive, and so was Djuna Barnes; so were Frost, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, and Caldwell.

Academic text (1997)
His work, like Arthur Miller, has had a lasting impact on American theater and society.

Surface Forms

Arthur Miller main

Morphology

Arthur + Miller

This is a proper name referring to a specific individual; knowing the constituent tokens 'Arthur' and 'Miller' (which here function as names) does not allow a learner to infer that the referent is an American playwright or his dates. The meaning is purely referential and requires world knowledge rather than compositional analysis, so it is not derivable from the parts.

Etymology

Arthur Miller is easy to picture: think of Arthur like King Arthur and a miller as a worker at a mill standing together. That simple image helps you remember he was a 'playwright' who wrote strong plays about ordinary people, such as 'Death of a Salesman' and 'The Crucible'.