John Gatta
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195165050
- eISBN:
- 9780199835140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195165055.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence ...
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Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence in Concord, Massachusetts. This essay’s conception of nature is based not on a wilderness aesthetic, but on a pastoral sense of human interaction with the green world—a sense that Hawthorne associates in turn with Christian theological terms of grace and incarnation. The holiness of gardening likewise informs writing of this period by women such as Celia Thaxter and Margaret Fuller. The religious intensity of Walt Whitman’s ecopoetic worldview, epitomized by “Song of Myself,” ranges from the astronomical heights to the lowly plants mentioned in section 5 of this poem. Unlike Whitman’s oceanic poems, Herman Melville’s portrayal of the sea in Moby-Dick exposes nature’s underlying savagery and vulturism—but also raises deep questions about the divinely inscrutable freedom of Creation embodied by the great white whale.Less
Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence in Concord, Massachusetts. This essay’s conception of nature is based not on a wilderness aesthetic, but on a pastoral sense of human interaction with the green world—a sense that Hawthorne associates in turn with Christian theological terms of grace and incarnation. The holiness of gardening likewise informs writing of this period by women such as Celia Thaxter and Margaret Fuller. The religious intensity of Walt Whitman’s ecopoetic worldview, epitomized by “Song of Myself,” ranges from the astronomical heights to the lowly plants mentioned in section 5 of this poem. Unlike Whitman’s oceanic poems, Herman Melville’s portrayal of the sea in Moby-Dick exposes nature’s underlying savagery and vulturism—but also raises deep questions about the divinely inscrutable freedom of Creation embodied by the great white whale.
Michael T. Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195157765
- eISBN:
- 9780199787784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157765.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter considers some of the classics of 19th-century American literature: Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Thoreau’s Walden, and James’s The American. These canonical ...
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This chapter considers some of the classics of 19th-century American literature: Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Thoreau’s Walden, and James’s The American. These canonical works toy with the edict of knowability, but unlike popular genres, they ultimately reject complete revelation as an illusion. Their protagonists gravitate to inscrutability and hide in plain sight.Less
This chapter considers some of the classics of 19th-century American literature: Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Thoreau’s Walden, and James’s The American. These canonical works toy with the edict of knowability, but unlike popular genres, they ultimately reject complete revelation as an illusion. Their protagonists gravitate to inscrutability and hide in plain sight.
Maurice S. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199797578
- eISBN:
- 9780199932412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797578.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Chapter two shows how chance destabilizes conventional discussions of fate and free will. Beginning with a deeply historicized account of theological and philosophical denials of chance, the chapter ...
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Chapter two shows how chance destabilizes conventional discussions of fate and free will. Beginning with a deeply historicized account of theological and philosophical denials of chance, the chapter turns to Moby-Dick to demonstrate how Melville subverts Christian beliefs in providence and the argument from design, preferring instead to resuscitate concepts of chance as presented in classical and Early Modern scepticism. This chapter also shows how Melville’s knowledge of oceanography, meteorology, and navigation shape his understanding of probability and the potential for managing chance’s disruptive power. We end with a discussion of King Ahab as a figure for anxieties over the possibilities of chance as Moby-Dick resists both formal unity and causal teleology.Less
Chapter two shows how chance destabilizes conventional discussions of fate and free will. Beginning with a deeply historicized account of theological and philosophical denials of chance, the chapter turns to Moby-Dick to demonstrate how Melville subverts Christian beliefs in providence and the argument from design, preferring instead to resuscitate concepts of chance as presented in classical and Early Modern scepticism. This chapter also shows how Melville’s knowledge of oceanography, meteorology, and navigation shape his understanding of probability and the potential for managing chance’s disruptive power. We end with a discussion of King Ahab as a figure for anxieties over the possibilities of chance as Moby-Dick resists both formal unity and causal teleology.
Giles Gunn
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195142822
- eISBN:
- 9780199850297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142822.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
One of the best words to describe Herman Melville's reputation, especially among other American writers, is colossus for he has been able to contribute in no small part to the classic literature of ...
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One of the best words to describe Herman Melville's reputation, especially among other American writers, is colossus for he has been able to contribute in no small part to the classic literature of the nineteenth century. Although he might have been outwritten by other prominent authors such as Mark Twain and Henry James, among others, Herman Melville managed to write some of the most significant and more ambitious stories in both prose and poetry, such as Mardi: And a Voyage Thither, Moby Dick, and Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land to name a few. Aside from taking on a multitude of various themes and issues, Melville's works complied with a common theme that involves consuming and creating, brought about by Melville's belief that art was meant to be perceived as a semireligious assertion that art reflects the most important aspects of life and experience.Less
One of the best words to describe Herman Melville's reputation, especially among other American writers, is colossus for he has been able to contribute in no small part to the classic literature of the nineteenth century. Although he might have been outwritten by other prominent authors such as Mark Twain and Henry James, among others, Herman Melville managed to write some of the most significant and more ambitious stories in both prose and poetry, such as Mardi: And a Voyage Thither, Moby Dick, and Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land to name a few. Aside from taking on a multitude of various themes and issues, Melville's works complied with a common theme that involves consuming and creating, brought about by Melville's belief that art was meant to be perceived as a semireligious assertion that art reflects the most important aspects of life and experience.
Reeve Huston
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195136005
- eISBN:
- 9780199848782
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195136005.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter begins with a passage from Herman Melville, published in 1851, which offers a painful insight into the politics and economy of his era. Regarding property in human beings, the law of ...
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This chapter begins with a passage from Herman Melville, published in 1851, which offers a painful insight into the politics and economy of his era. Regarding property in human beings, the law of fast-fish was inviolable. Nor was Melville referring only to slavery. Between 1847 and the publication of Moby Dick, anti-renters learned with dramatic finality the limits to popular power under the second-party system. Melville's passage contained not just a description, but also a portent of change: like the Temple of the Philistines, a structure with only two props cannot stand. It was not the law that was at risk, however, but the party system through which lawmakers were chosen and organized. It doubtless referred to the slavery controversy, but perhaps not to that alone. New York's anti-renters and landlords helped undermine the stability of the second-party system and assisted in laying the groundwork for a new political order.Less
This chapter begins with a passage from Herman Melville, published in 1851, which offers a painful insight into the politics and economy of his era. Regarding property in human beings, the law of fast-fish was inviolable. Nor was Melville referring only to slavery. Between 1847 and the publication of Moby Dick, anti-renters learned with dramatic finality the limits to popular power under the second-party system. Melville's passage contained not just a description, but also a portent of change: like the Temple of the Philistines, a structure with only two props cannot stand. It was not the law that was at risk, however, but the party system through which lawmakers were chosen and organized. It doubtless referred to the slavery controversy, but perhaps not to that alone. New York's anti-renters and landlords helped undermine the stability of the second-party system and assisted in laying the groundwork for a new political order.
Geoffrey Sanborn
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199751693
- eISBN:
- 9780199894819
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751693.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, World Literature
This final chapter argues that the crucial quality that Queequeg brings to Moby-Dick is the same one that was so powerfully associated with the Maori in general and Te Pehi Kupe in particular: a ...
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This final chapter argues that the crucial quality that Queequeg brings to Moby-Dick is the same one that was so powerfully associated with the Maori in general and Te Pehi Kupe in particular: a fiercely majestic pride. This is what makes it possible for Queequeg to read Moby Dick not as a symbol of evil, as Ahab does, or as an instructively baffling object of interpretation, as Ishmael does, but as a version of himself, a worthy and uncannily familiar rival. It is, the chapter suggests, exactly how we are encouraged to read Moby Dick: as a magnified incarnation of our own life-force, spouting his, and our, “frothed defiance to the skies.”Less
This final chapter argues that the crucial quality that Queequeg brings to Moby-Dick is the same one that was so powerfully associated with the Maori in general and Te Pehi Kupe in particular: a fiercely majestic pride. This is what makes it possible for Queequeg to read Moby Dick not as a symbol of evil, as Ahab does, or as an instructively baffling object of interpretation, as Ishmael does, but as a version of himself, a worthy and uncannily familiar rival. It is, the chapter suggests, exactly how we are encouraged to read Moby Dick: as a magnified incarnation of our own life-force, spouting his, and our, “frothed defiance to the skies.”
Steve Mentz
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816691036
- eISBN:
- 9781452953571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816691036.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Through extracts from “The Mast-Head” chapter of Moby-Dick, this Interchapter considers the intellectual consequences of exchanging land for sea.
Through extracts from “The Mast-Head” chapter of Moby-Dick, this Interchapter considers the intellectual consequences of exchanging land for sea.
Edward Sugden
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479899692
- eISBN:
- 9781479843435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479899692.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This introduction provides a synoptic overview of the project as a whole concentrating on how it relates to the crisis of identity in the study of the nineteenth-century Americas that has evolved in ...
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This introduction provides a synoptic overview of the project as a whole concentrating on how it relates to the crisis of identity in the study of the nineteenth-century Americas that has evolved in the years since 2001. It begins with an extended analysis of the overlooked second and third clauses of Moby-Dick—“Some years ago—never mind how long precisely”—and shows how they contain a model for history, geography, politics, and form, as well as how these areas relate to issues of field definition. From this close reading, it defines the central structural terms of the book, namely, the “interstitial state,” the “oceanic geoculture,” the “dissonant time,” and the “archival form.”Less
This introduction provides a synoptic overview of the project as a whole concentrating on how it relates to the crisis of identity in the study of the nineteenth-century Americas that has evolved in the years since 2001. It begins with an extended analysis of the overlooked second and third clauses of Moby-Dick—“Some years ago—never mind how long precisely”—and shows how they contain a model for history, geography, politics, and form, as well as how these areas relate to issues of field definition. From this close reading, it defines the central structural terms of the book, namely, the “interstitial state,” the “oceanic geoculture,” the “dissonant time,” and the “archival form.”
Edward Sugden
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479899692
- eISBN:
- 9781479843435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479899692.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This coda considers how and why it is that the emergent worlds chronicled in this book have become legible to us now. It seeks to reflect on the contemporary conditions that have made the testimonies ...
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This coda considers how and why it is that the emergent worlds chronicled in this book have become legible to us now. It seeks to reflect on the contemporary conditions that have made the testimonies and archives covered across the three chapters comprehensible on their own terms, rather than through the lens of a later modernity. It concludes that we now live in a comparably interstitial age as the worlds that make up this book. More precisely, it studies Ishmael in the water at the end of Moby-Dick and suggests that this episode represents a point after a threshold, where he had left the chaotic Pacific and had entered into the beginnings of American modernity. In and around 2001, that era of modernity began to decline, and a new period of systemic uncertainty, our own, began. Ishmael is at the entrance, we at the exit to that age. Ishmael, as he drifts in the water, thus gestures toward anterior ages of transition but also to our future, warning us of the catastrophic consequences of failing to take advantage of these moments of historical promise.Less
This coda considers how and why it is that the emergent worlds chronicled in this book have become legible to us now. It seeks to reflect on the contemporary conditions that have made the testimonies and archives covered across the three chapters comprehensible on their own terms, rather than through the lens of a later modernity. It concludes that we now live in a comparably interstitial age as the worlds that make up this book. More precisely, it studies Ishmael in the water at the end of Moby-Dick and suggests that this episode represents a point after a threshold, where he had left the chaotic Pacific and had entered into the beginnings of American modernity. In and around 2001, that era of modernity began to decline, and a new period of systemic uncertainty, our own, began. Ishmael is at the entrance, we at the exit to that age. Ishmael, as he drifts in the water, thus gestures toward anterior ages of transition but also to our future, warning us of the catastrophic consequences of failing to take advantage of these moments of historical promise.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229406
- eISBN:
- 9780823240982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823229406.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
In this chapter the author focuses on the figure of the captive king led away from what Wai-Chee Dimock has convincingly argued is the dominant racial logic of Moby-Dick, namely, the fate linking ...
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In this chapter the author focuses on the figure of the captive king led away from what Wai-Chee Dimock has convincingly argued is the dominant racial logic of Moby-Dick, namely, the fate linking Ahab and his voyage with the “doomed”Indians after whom his ship is named. The Pequod, Ishmael explains, were a “celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians” now as “extinct as the ancient Medes.” The last man to go down with the ship in Moby-Dick is Tashtego, the Gay-Head Indian, whose final act is to nail a sky-hawk's wing to the mainmast. The royal slave or captive king, insofar as he is essentially African, is fundamentally deterritorialized: his mythic element is the sea, and the ideal event to which the tradition orients its confused thinking about him is an ever-postponed emancipation.Less
In this chapter the author focuses on the figure of the captive king led away from what Wai-Chee Dimock has convincingly argued is the dominant racial logic of Moby-Dick, namely, the fate linking Ahab and his voyage with the “doomed”Indians after whom his ship is named. The Pequod, Ishmael explains, were a “celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians” now as “extinct as the ancient Medes.” The last man to go down with the ship in Moby-Dick is Tashtego, the Gay-Head Indian, whose final act is to nail a sky-hawk's wing to the mainmast. The royal slave or captive king, insofar as he is essentially African, is fundamentally deterritorialized: his mythic element is the sea, and the ideal event to which the tradition orients its confused thinking about him is an ever-postponed emancipation.
Tamsin Lorraine
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748618743
- eISBN:
- 9780748671762
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748618743.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter explores the alternative conception of space that emerges in the concepts of heterogeneous blocks of space-time and smooth space which are outlined by Deleuze and Guattari in their A ...
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This chapter explores the alternative conception of space that emerges in the concepts of heterogeneous blocks of space-time and smooth space which are outlined by Deleuze and Guattari in their A Thousand Plateaus. It first examines the concepts of territoriality (or milieu) and of the refrain in Deleuze and Guattari's description of the subject as actually constituted by the various rhythms of the body's components and their relations to interior and exterior blocks of space-time that become homogenized into the lived experience of an organism. According to this new conception of the conditions of stability and identity, ‘the organism as a self-regulating whole with its own spatial orientation can then be opened up to forces beyond it’. Taking up the frequent references that Deleuze and Guattari employ in A Thousand Plateaus to Melville's Moby Dick, and to the character of Ahab in particular, the chapter explicates the concept of the ‘nomadic subject’ which occurs when a process of subjectivity reaches a critical threshold that pushes it into another pattern of activity, thus actualizing singularities that were previously only implicit, and its power to affect changes, and be affected by changes as well.Less
This chapter explores the alternative conception of space that emerges in the concepts of heterogeneous blocks of space-time and smooth space which are outlined by Deleuze and Guattari in their A Thousand Plateaus. It first examines the concepts of territoriality (or milieu) and of the refrain in Deleuze and Guattari's description of the subject as actually constituted by the various rhythms of the body's components and their relations to interior and exterior blocks of space-time that become homogenized into the lived experience of an organism. According to this new conception of the conditions of stability and identity, ‘the organism as a self-regulating whole with its own spatial orientation can then be opened up to forces beyond it’. Taking up the frequent references that Deleuze and Guattari employ in A Thousand Plateaus to Melville's Moby Dick, and to the character of Ahab in particular, the chapter explicates the concept of the ‘nomadic subject’ which occurs when a process of subjectivity reaches a critical threshold that pushes it into another pattern of activity, thus actualizing singularities that were previously only implicit, and its power to affect changes, and be affected by changes as well.
Kim Paffenroth
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823225187
- eISBN:
- 9780823237135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823225187.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This concluding chapter links together Blaise Pascal's Pensées, conceived in the years before his death in 1662 and first edited as late as 1844, and Herman Melville's ...
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This concluding chapter links together Blaise Pascal's Pensées, conceived in the years before his death in 1662 and first edited as late as 1844, and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) by way of the theme of the “wisdom of the heart”. Our everyday experience is thoroughly mediated by the Bible. We refer ourselves and others to biblical characters, try to live up to them or react against them, while our deeds are oriented to scriptural injunctions, models, and even hermeneutical templates such as allegory and typology. Pascal's experience of God is firmly shaped by the scriptures, while the Bible is in turn marked by the ways in which he frames it. And we can read an entire theology condensed in the pages of Moby-Dick, one whose sense and function are quite different from the orthodoxy that animates Pascal.Less
This concluding chapter links together Blaise Pascal's Pensées, conceived in the years before his death in 1662 and first edited as late as 1844, and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) by way of the theme of the “wisdom of the heart”. Our everyday experience is thoroughly mediated by the Bible. We refer ourselves and others to biblical characters, try to live up to them or react against them, while our deeds are oriented to scriptural injunctions, models, and even hermeneutical templates such as allegory and typology. Pascal's experience of God is firmly shaped by the scriptures, while the Bible is in turn marked by the ways in which he frames it. And we can read an entire theology condensed in the pages of Moby-Dick, one whose sense and function are quite different from the orthodoxy that animates Pascal.
Paul Grimstad
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199874071
- eISBN:
- 9780199345465
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199874071.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter looks at how Melville reacted to reviews for Moby-Dick by adding pages to the finished manuscript of Pierre, and considers Melville’s use of allegory. It also looks in detail at ...
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This chapter looks at how Melville reacted to reviews for Moby-Dick by adding pages to the finished manuscript of Pierre, and considers Melville’s use of allegory. It also looks in detail at Melville’s prose style circa 1851-1852.Less
This chapter looks at how Melville reacted to reviews for Moby-Dick by adding pages to the finished manuscript of Pierre, and considers Melville’s use of allegory. It also looks in detail at Melville’s prose style circa 1851-1852.
George Cotkin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199855735
- eISBN:
- 9780190252885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199855735.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter explains the etymology of some words associated with Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, which was first published in England as The Whale in October 1851 by Richard Bentley. In November ...
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This chapter explains the etymology of some words associated with Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, which was first published in England as The Whale in October 1851 by Richard Bentley. In November 1851, Harper's published the book in the United States with the full title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. The American edition included the Epilogue, which was lacking in the British edition. Moby-Dick refers to the White Whale, the leviathan dubbed by Jeremiah N. Reynolds as “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength,...white as wool.” The endless debates about the symbols and meaning of Moby-Dick are known collectively as “Moby-Dickering,” a term coined by Charles Poore in 1952. Moby-Dick has been published in almost every language in the world.Less
This chapter explains the etymology of some words associated with Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, which was first published in England as The Whale in October 1851 by Richard Bentley. In November 1851, Harper's published the book in the United States with the full title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. The American edition included the Epilogue, which was lacking in the British edition. Moby-Dick refers to the White Whale, the leviathan dubbed by Jeremiah N. Reynolds as “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength,...white as wool.” The endless debates about the symbols and meaning of Moby-Dick are known collectively as “Moby-Dickering,” a term coined by Charles Poore in 1952. Moby-Dick has been published in almost every language in the world.
George Cotkin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199855735
- eISBN:
- 9780190252885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199855735.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter presents extracts from various sources relating to Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, including quotations by Fitz-James O'Brien, W. Clark Russell, Donald G. Mitchell, Archibald ...
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This chapter presents extracts from various sources relating to Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, including quotations by Fitz-James O'Brien, W. Clark Russell, Donald G. Mitchell, Archibald MacMechan, Van Wyck Brooks, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Melville himself. Also included are quotes from publications such as London Morning Advertiser, New Bedford Daily Mercury, Boston Post, and Philadelphia Saturday Courier.Less
This chapter presents extracts from various sources relating to Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, including quotations by Fitz-James O'Brien, W. Clark Russell, Donald G. Mitchell, Archibald MacMechan, Van Wyck Brooks, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Melville himself. Also included are quotes from publications such as London Morning Advertiser, New Bedford Daily Mercury, Boston Post, and Philadelphia Saturday Courier.
George Cotkin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199855735
- eISBN:
- 9780190252885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199855735.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This epilogue focuses on “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream,” a song composed and recorded by Bob Dylan. It compares Dylan with Ishmael, the narrator and the only survivor in the Herman Melville novel ...
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This epilogue focuses on “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream,” a song composed and recorded by Bob Dylan. It compares Dylan with Ishmael, the narrator and the only survivor in the Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick. The song refers to Captain Ahab as Captain Arab, with Dylan adopting Ishmael's persona. Instead of the Pequod, Captain Arab commands the Mayflower. “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream” is essentially a surreal reflection of the failed promise of America and how pursuit of the White Whale and profits can lead to disaster.Less
This epilogue focuses on “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream,” a song composed and recorded by Bob Dylan. It compares Dylan with Ishmael, the narrator and the only survivor in the Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick. The song refers to Captain Ahab as Captain Arab, with Dylan adopting Ishmael's persona. Instead of the Pequod, Captain Arab commands the Mayflower. “Bob Dylan's 115th Dream” is essentially a surreal reflection of the failed promise of America and how pursuit of the White Whale and profits can lead to disaster.
Paul hurh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804791144
- eISBN:
- 9780804794510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791144.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter argues that the terror of Moby-Dick dramatizes the logical paradoxes of a meta-dialectical method. It introduces a study of the influence of Melville’s close friend, George Adler, a ...
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This chapter argues that the terror of Moby-Dick dramatizes the logical paradoxes of a meta-dialectical method. It introduces a study of the influence of Melville’s close friend, George Adler, a proponent of Hegelian metaphysics and a chronic paranoiac, upon Moby-Dick. And it shows how the multiple terrors of Moby-Dick do not arise from one or the other philosophical commitment, but rather from a Hegel-inspired application of dialectical method to the problem of dialectical method itself. The chapter analyzes how moments of precarious balance, in Moby-Dick, are paired with an existential and epistemological terror. The chapter concludes with a reading of how Melville models this dialectical terror upon the physical properties of light.Less
This chapter argues that the terror of Moby-Dick dramatizes the logical paradoxes of a meta-dialectical method. It introduces a study of the influence of Melville’s close friend, George Adler, a proponent of Hegelian metaphysics and a chronic paranoiac, upon Moby-Dick. And it shows how the multiple terrors of Moby-Dick do not arise from one or the other philosophical commitment, but rather from a Hegel-inspired application of dialectical method to the problem of dialectical method itself. The chapter analyzes how moments of precarious balance, in Moby-Dick, are paired with an existential and epistemological terror. The chapter concludes with a reading of how Melville models this dialectical terror upon the physical properties of light.
John Lardas Modern
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823249800
- eISBN:
- 9780823252480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823249800.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter demonstrates that the concept of feedback—as a technological condition, historical ontology, and theoretical frame—challenges traditional ways of conceiving of religion and writing its ...
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This chapter demonstrates that the concept of feedback—as a technological condition, historical ontology, and theoretical frame—challenges traditional ways of conceiving of religion and writing its history. This essay dwells within 1920's America, a moment when the capacity of machines to regulate both nonhuman and human systems reached a point of critical mass and intensity. The chapter addresses responses to this changing technological atmosphere among Anglo-Protestant leaders, American Dada, as well as leaders of the infamous “Revival” of Herman Melville and his long-forgotten Moby-Dick (1851). Historically, the chapter demonstrates how Protestant strategies of self-centering, so pervasive in the early twentieth century, failed to contain the billowing nature of feedback technology. Theoretically, the chapter argues that the principle of feedback allows us to redefine religion not as something primarily ideological—that is, not exclusively about ideas, beliefs, creeds, nor simply as some lived extension or revision of such ideas, beliefs, and creeds. The chapter concludes by arguing that attention to feedback pushes us to consider that religion is not about the freedom to believe but rather about the possibilities that condition our unbelief.Less
This chapter demonstrates that the concept of feedback—as a technological condition, historical ontology, and theoretical frame—challenges traditional ways of conceiving of religion and writing its history. This essay dwells within 1920's America, a moment when the capacity of machines to regulate both nonhuman and human systems reached a point of critical mass and intensity. The chapter addresses responses to this changing technological atmosphere among Anglo-Protestant leaders, American Dada, as well as leaders of the infamous “Revival” of Herman Melville and his long-forgotten Moby-Dick (1851). Historically, the chapter demonstrates how Protestant strategies of self-centering, so pervasive in the early twentieth century, failed to contain the billowing nature of feedback technology. Theoretically, the chapter argues that the principle of feedback allows us to redefine religion not as something primarily ideological—that is, not exclusively about ideas, beliefs, creeds, nor simply as some lived extension or revision of such ideas, beliefs, and creeds. The chapter concludes by arguing that attention to feedback pushes us to consider that religion is not about the freedom to believe but rather about the possibilities that condition our unbelief.
Denis Donoghue
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300107814
- eISBN:
- 9780300133783
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300107814.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book ...
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How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book presents a short list of “relative” classics—works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time—neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise and hyperbole. The book bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each separately, each chapter discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and offers contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. The book extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.Less
How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book presents a short list of “relative” classics—works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time—neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise and hyperbole. The book bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each separately, each chapter discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and offers contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. The book extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.
Shari Goldberg
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254774
- eISBN:
- 9780823261055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254774.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Melville cryptically closes Benito Cereno by emphasizing the “voiceless end” of the slave leader, Babo. On the one hand, the weight of the story, including all of its omissions and oddities, seems to ...
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Melville cryptically closes Benito Cereno by emphasizing the “voiceless end” of the slave leader, Babo. On the one hand, the weight of the story, including all of its omissions and oddities, seems to land in this phrase, rendering it a final testimonial claim. On the other hand, Melville is insistent (especially in Pierre) that silence cannot be translated into voice, which means that Babo’s voicelessness can make no claim at all. This chapter examines how to adequately engage the voiceless end. It reads Melville’s words against the etymological history of silence, and it compares his challenging position to that of more recent human rights writing. Ultimately, Melville is shown to elide the expectation that testimony be correlated to the category of voice. Other narrative entities, in particular the air around the ship the San Dominick, register the truth of the text by disturbing the characters without saying anything.Less
Melville cryptically closes Benito Cereno by emphasizing the “voiceless end” of the slave leader, Babo. On the one hand, the weight of the story, including all of its omissions and oddities, seems to land in this phrase, rendering it a final testimonial claim. On the other hand, Melville is insistent (especially in Pierre) that silence cannot be translated into voice, which means that Babo’s voicelessness can make no claim at all. This chapter examines how to adequately engage the voiceless end. It reads Melville’s words against the etymological history of silence, and it compares his challenging position to that of more recent human rights writing. Ultimately, Melville is shown to elide the expectation that testimony be correlated to the category of voice. Other narrative entities, in particular the air around the ship the San Dominick, register the truth of the text by disturbing the characters without saying anything.
