“Moving inward as well as north” : the historical imagination in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Timebends

Arthur Miller, one of the most admirable of Americans to come out of the “American century”, died in 2005, aged 89. In the UK, at least, his work has undergone a revival and the themes of his great plays remain resonant, even though, in many respects, they are historically specific. The relationship between literature and history – whether conceived as a symbolist or allegorical relationship - together with an instance of the past invading the present, are brought out in a compelling episode in Miller’s autobiography, Timebends, and offer a way of talking about those inter-connections in The Crucible.