Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Herman Melville (1819-1891) – Moby Dick'

Much of the current critical literature on Moby-Dick lacks a unifying focus. This essay attempts to provide a thread of continuity for Moby-Dick by proving that paradox and Herman Melville’s anticipation of the early existential movement hold the key to a full reading of this text. By viewing the text itself, Melville’s personal correspondence, and the writings of Emerson, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, the paradoxical tension by which this text must be read comes into clearer focus.<br>Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<br>"May 2006."<br>Includes bibliographic references (leaves 32-35)

This thesis considers Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as a textual strategy of possible, alternative models of reading, as well as a text in itself. I approach the text as a drama of interpretations and argue that the individual consciousnesses of different interpreters represent different interpretive strategies, and that these differences suggest distinct structures of community. This approach becomes more focussed in the discussion of Ahab and Ishmael as representatives of two contrasting interpretive possibilities, of "reading" the text as a "pasteboard mask" which conceals a stable identity and single "truth," versus "reading" the text of the "defaced" and hence indeterminate surface of changing "meanings." Each strategy implies a different way of conceiving "space" as the "place" where community is formed, and though critics frequently perceive the ending of Moby-Dick as a paradoxical conflict between these two visionary quests, I suggest that Ishmael's survival presents a possible resolution, where Moby Dick becomes the narrative of filling space with many narratives to create the text Moby-Dick.

Neste estudo de análise e interpretação de Moby-Dick (1851), de Herman Melville (1819-1891), pretendemos formular e esclarecer questões relativas ao momento de definição do romance norte-americano, bem como à obra que se traduz como o esforço mais radical de um norte-americano na tentativa de, então, levar a forma romance ao estudo e reflexão sobre sua sociedade. Para tanto, recuperamos da leitura da obra os aspectos que mais fortemente tematizam tal intento: a crise ideológica de fins da década de 1840, quando os ideais revolucionários de igualdade da antiga república são finalmente confrontados com as consequências de sua integração no sistema capitalista mundializado questão central de Redburn (1849) e White-Jacket (1850), romances que preparam Moby-Dick e marcam as primeiras experiências de Melville como escritor social; o conceito de fronteira, problema de definição identitária norte-americana que abarca desde a ocupação da wilderness puritana no século XVII ao estabelecimento, à época de Melville, de uma política de Estado imperialista e, ademais, passa pela cristalização de perspectivas culturalmente particulares de propriedade e formação social de classe; e, finalmente, as noções de técnica e trabalho, diretamente implicadas na atividade baleeira e, de modo mais amplo, no avanço civilizatório norte-americano, e para quais pesam a consciência do valor social do trabalho livre e sua coexistência com a escravidão. É sob tais preocupações que contemplaremos, à luz da teoria crítica e da tradição crítica brasileira, as especificidades formais do romance, a saber, a apropriação estrutural do trágico em contraposição à épica, que define o percurso de Ahab, o capitão do Pequod, em sua caçada a Moby Dick, e a formação de um narrador reflexionante, o sobrevivente Ishmael, que retoma o passado da catástrofe para ferir o presente em que se perpetuam, no roldão do ingresso norte-americano na modernidade, as condições para sua reprodução.<br>Through an analytical and interpretative study of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick I intend to formulate and clarify the historical turning point of the American novel, specifically what is deemed the most radical effort of an American writer to bring a comprehensive study on society into novelistic form. In order to accomplish that, I reconsider some of the features of Moby-Dick that strongly appealed to the times. First the ideological crisis of the 1840s, when the equalitarian revolutionary ideals of the Independence were finally confronted by the consequences of the U.S. being fully compromised to the Industrial Revolution and the capitalistic worldwide system. This is a central issue in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both novels where some major features of Moby-Dick are anticipated and firstly tested. Second, I scrutinize the concept of frontier -- a national identity issue that can be traced back to the Puritan 17th century errand into the wilderness that is strongly attached in the age of Melville to the ideological making of American imperialism. Besides, it also has had a major role in the crystallization of culturally specific perspectives on property and the establishment of social classes. Finally, I reconsider the notions of technique and labor, directly implied in the whaling industry and in a more general way in the marching of American civilization towards the West, which has had a strong impact on the understanding of the social significance of free labor and its coexistence with slavery. With those things under consideration, and through the surmises of the Critical Theory and the Brazilian tradition of social and literary criticism as well, it is my aim to shed light on some esthetical features of the novel, particularly on the tragic structure (as opposed to the epic) that defines the career of Pequods Captain Ahab and his obsessive chasing of Moby Dick, and the constitution of a self-reflexive narrator, the survivor Ishmael, who recalls the past of the catastrophe in order to attack the social reproduction of its conditions in the present.

Des nombreux tableaux et gravures évoqués dans le texte jusqu'aux tatouages et autres hiéroglyphes, Moby Dick est un roman marque par la multiplicité des représentations. Il semble que la représentation littéraire soit régie par la loi du narcissisme, qui règle tous les doubles et les jeux de miroir présents dans la fiction melvilienne. L'écriture permet en effet au moi de se représenter selon un processus qui, détruisant la plénitude narcissique de l'infans, contribue en même temps à la constitution du sujet. Mais la lettre en tant que trace écrite est loin d'établir une correspondance préétablie avec ce qu'elle désigne, laissant ainsi la place à une indétermination fondamentale. Cette conception contribue à la déconstruction d'une vision traditionnelle ontothéologique de la production de l'écriture. La question de la représentation ne peut être séparée de celle de la signification et du déchiffrement des signes, Moby Dick mettant en scène les processus interprétatifs mis en œuvre face à une image ou à un texte. Le sens n'est pas donné à l'avance mais reste à construire par l'interprète : le texte de Melville peut à ce titre être considéré comme la représentation d'un système linguistique, en l'occurrence la théorie énonciative de Culioli<br>Whether it deals with paintings and etchings or hieroglyphics, the novel is marked by a multiplicity of representations. Literary representation turns out to be under the rule of the principle of narcissism, which governs all the duplicates and mirroring effects in Melville fiction. The play of the writing allows the representation of the self according to a process which destroys the narcissistic plenitude of the "infans" subject but contributes at the same time to constitute the subject. But as a written mark, the letter is far from establishing a pre-determined relation with the object it refers to, and allows a fundamental indeterminacy. Such a conception contributes to the deconstruction of a traditional and theological vision of the production of the writing. The problem of representation cannot be separated from that of meaning and of the deciphering of sings. Moby-dick shows the process of the interpretation of an image or a text : meaning is not given, but has to be constructed by the interpret. In this sense Melville text can be considered as the representation of a linguistic system, in this case culioli's enunciative theory

Milton &amp; Melville : Le Démon de l'allusion étudie la signification de l'allusion à Milton dans Taïpi, Moby¬Dick, L'Escroc à la confiance et Billy-Budd, Marin. Un état détaillé de la recherche sur les rapports entre les deux auteurs montre la prédominance d'une conception de l'allusion comme moyen d'identifier le sens d'un texte incertain à celui d'un autre, supposé stable ; or, il s'agit, en réalité, d'une relation dynamique et réciproque. Ludique, satirique, impie, ou érotique, l'allusion melvillienne est multiforme et variable ¬ondoiement qui la dérobe à une approche trop générale, mais en lequel réside justement un sens plus global, au-delà de simples effets locaux. Loin d'être un ornement ou un supplément, elle fait partie de la trame même du texte ; oblique, déroutante, elle n'en sert pas moins la grande ambition melvillienne d'« énoncer la Vérité ». C'est, en effet, allusivement — dans une relation, en particulier, au Paradis perdu — que Melville décrit à la fois les travers de la société contemporaine, l'aliénation du moi et la terreur des « sphères invisibles ». Le poème melvillien peut se concevoir comme un lieu où la vérité est, dans le même mouvement, dégagée et exhibée, par une chimie à la fois expérimentale et picturale. Le processus mobilise ¬selon un modèle fédéral où s'affirme une originalité américaine — une allusion complexe, dont le sens ne réside pas seulement dans les éléments importés par les textes simultanément convoqués, mais aussi dans leur interaction conflictuelle. Cet agôn allusif récurrent — qui définit notamment l'écrire-blanc de Moby-Dick — participe d'une violence relationnelle dont le Satan de Milton est le plus puissant symbole<br>Milton &amp; Melville: The Demon of Allusion studies the significance of allusions to Milton in Typee, Moby¬Dick, The Confidence-Man and Billy-Budd, Sailor. Examining the state of research shows that allusion tends to be seen as a way to identify the meaning of an ambiguous Melvillean text with a supposedly stable Miltonic one – when in fact the allusive relationship is dynamic and reciprocal. All at once playful, satirical, impious, and erotic, Melvillean allusion is protean and thus eludes generalization. However, its very elusiveness hints at a more global significance, going beyond merely local import. Far from being just a flourish or a supplement, it is the very stuff that the text is made of. However oblique and disconcerting, it plays a crucial part in Melville's ambition to master the "great Art of Telling the Truth". Indeed, it is through allusion—in particular to Paradise Lost—that he satirizes contemporary society, explores the alienation of the self and expresses the terror of the "invisible spheres". Melville's text can be conceived of as the locus where truth is both achieved and exhibited to the reader, through a chemistry that is experimental as well as pictorial in nature. Based on a uniquely American federal model, such a process involves a complex allusive mix, the meaning of which lies not only in what the different texts bring to their host, "'but also in the destructive interaction between them. This recurrent allusive agon – the "colorless all-color" of writing – speaks to the violence of Melvillean relationships, the most powerful symbol of which is Milton's Satan

Este trabalho é de natureza teórica e estuda a obra Moby-Dick, de Herman Melville, à luz da filosofia antimetafísica de Friedrich Nietzsche, mais especificamente como está concretizada em Sobre verdade e mentira em sentido extramoral e Crepúsculo dos ídolos. Demonstra-se que as indagações de fundo ontológico presentes na obra de Melville encontram resposta parcial na noção de impossibilidade metafísica do pensador alemão. Para tal demonstração, recorre-se, em primeiro lugar, a uma sistematização do pensamento de Nietzsche e, em segundo, a uma abordagem interpretativa e compreensiva do texto de Melville, acentuada por meio do diálogo com a filosofia do próprio Nietzsche e, alternativamente, de Heidegger. Em conformidade com Iser, a compreensão dos sentidos do texto literário aqui estudado é realizada pelo trabalho de interpretação e estabelecimento de sentidos perpetrado pelo leitor, seja na fixação do que está claramente dado no texto, seja na busca dos sentidos lacunares, não claramente formulados e verbalizados.<br>This is a theoretical work on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and its relation with the anti-metaphysical philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as found especially in Twilight of the Idols and On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense. It is shown that the ontological nature of Moby-Dick, the novel, finds a partial answer in the notion of metaphysical impossibility developed by the German philosopher. In order to accomplish this goal, a systematization of Nietzsche’s thought was made, so that an interpretative approach of the literary text could be carried out emphasizing a dialogue with his philosophy, and, alternatively, Heidegger’s. In compliance with Iser, this study takes into consideration the fact that comprehension is achieved through interpretation and what the reader is able to perceive in the literary text, either reinforcing what is already given there, or searching for what is unformulated and non-verbalized in it.

This thesis examines the connections between three frequently associated nineteenth-century texts, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Melville's Moby Dick, and Thoreau's Walden. It begins by reviewing the contexts normally offered for them, and then proposes an alternative one, "dialogic irony," that is based upon the complementary theoretical models of Friedrich Schlegel and Mikhail Bakhtin. After this conceptual background is outlined, the various modes of dialogic irony presented in the three works are discussed. That of Walden arises out of a close analogy between self and text: both are a series of inner voices juxtaposed with and often contradicting one another. Sartor complicates this relatively unobstructed form of selfhood through the inclusion of the Editor, whose unitary voice represents a challenge to the kind of selfhood sanctioned by Walden. Moby Dick also challenges dialogic irony, but its forms of opposition are more penetrating and various: while in Carlyle's text dialogic irony is ultimately affirmed through the figure of Teufelsdrockh, Ishmael is left stranded and displaced by the multitude of voices in his text. Melville's work therefore provides an excellent way to review and critique some of the prevailing assumptions about dialogue in contemporary criticism, a task sketched in the conclusion.

La tesis doctoral propone un recorrido por la prosa de ficción y de viaje de Herman Melville, en la que construye imaginarios regionales de identidad latinoamericana. La investigación inicia con el análisis de las ficciones Taipí y Omú, ambientadas en islas “no civilizadas”, para contrastarlas con los tres textos literarios que versan sobre o se desarrollan en América Latina: Las Encantadas, Benito Cereno y Moby Dick, además de otros textos más cortos de su acervo, como el cuento “La veranda”, que dialogan sobre todo de ámbitos peruanos y ecuatorianos. En las tres ficciones mencionadas se develan los motivos que Melville erige sobre Latinoamérica: se trata de una tierra que encarna el exotismo de los Cronistas de Indias, pero atravesada por las corrientes científicas y naturalistas de los siglos XVIII y XIX. La región buscaba afianzar su identidad tras la independencia del Imperio español, mientras era seguida de cerca, con intereses expansionistas, por otra potencia que se consolidaba en el mapa geopolítico decimonónico: Estados Unidos. Esto es claro sobre todo en el análisis de las Islas Galápagos creadas por Melville. Asimismo, se propone una reflexión sobre personajes latinoamericanos, que aparecen en las ficciones como una conexión globalizante del país del norte con las regiones del sur: la tapada limeña, la viuda chola, el ermitaño Oberlus, el criollo cubano, etc. En este sentido se propone también el estudio del uso de los términos de tratamiento en la región, el sistema de blanqueamiento, el uso del español en ámbitos anglófonos, entre otros aspectos. Por último, se estudia todo lo que implica la incursión de un doblón ecuatoriano de oro en el negocio ballenero: la historia real de dicha moneda y cómo esta une Moby Dick con Ecuador, Estados Unidos con la Vieja España y Latinoamérica, en la historia del siglo XIX.<br>This dissertation examines those works of fiction and travel writing by Herman Melville in which the author constructs regional imaginaries of a Latin-American identity. The research starts with an analysis of the novels Typee and Omoo, which take place in ‘uncivilized’ islands, and contrast their depictions with those of three texts that deal with Latin America: The Encantadas, Benito Cereno, and Moby-Dick, as well as with other shorter texts such as “The Piazza”, always focusing on Peruvian or Ecuadorian themes. All three longer pieces display the motives of Melville’s vision of Latin America as a land that epitomizes the exoticism of the Indian Chroniclers, and whose depiction is also permeated by the scientific and naturalist inquiries of the 18th and 19th centuries. The region is presented as seeking its own identity after achieving its independence from the Spanish empire, while being closely haunted by the expansionist interests of another consolidating power in the nineteenth-century geopolitical map: the United States. This is especially the case in Melville’s presentation of the Galápagos islands. The dissertation also provides an analysis of the Melville’s Latin-American characters that are presented as a globalizing connection of the U.S. with its southern neighbors, and which include figures such as the ‘tapada’ from Lima, the chola widow, the hermit Oberlus, the Cuban creole, etc. The study also analyzes aspects such as the modes of address in the region, the system of whitening, and the use of Spanish in Anglophone contexts. Finally, the thesis provides a case study of a specific feature: the Ecuadorian gold doubloon in the context of the whale industry, offering an account of the real history of the coin and of how it connects Moby-Dick with Ecuador, the United States, Old Spain, and Latin America within the history of the nineteenth century.

This thesis approaches literature and language as processes of conflict. Conflict is defined according to the philosophy of ‘negativity’ and an applied understanding of Hegelian dialecticism. Conflict, in simple terms, is a process in which language simultaneously asserts and negates. The literary text, or object, is lisible both structurally and thematically in terms of conflict. The key texts examined in this thesis are Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851); Franz Kafka’s The Castle (1926); and Maurice Blanchot’s Thomas the Obscure (1950) and Awaiting Oblivion (1962). Several features emerge in a literature of conflict. There is a textual ‘law of separation’ by which the literary object maintains a pretence or artifice of separation between the world of the real and the narrative world. Relations, and relationism, become primary modes of narrative progression, in place of cause and effect, or any logically orthodox telos. Although the parameters of this thesis are not broad enough to allow definitive conclusions to be drawn about the conflictual nature of language, some symmetries and correspondences do appear. For example, structural linguistic conflict (conflict at the level of grammar, voice, pronoun and so on) corresponds to the formal mode of the literary narrative, particularly in terms of separation and relationism. The central contribution of this thesis is to elaborate conflict as a new theoretical foundation for the reading of literary texts and for the understanding of language. In demonstrating this approach, several innovations are made in the more refined contexts of Melville, Kafka and Blanchot studies. Further scope for development of the analysis mounted by this thesis exists, not only in terms of the philosophy of ‘negativity’ and its relation to writing, but also in the context of the application of Hegelian dialecticism to language, writing and more generally, aesthetics.

Any text which criticizes, undermines and/or transforms the encyclopaedic ideal of ordering and textualizing the world in a closed, linear fashion can be defined as a post-encyclopaedic text. This thesis explores both theoretical and artistic texts which inhabit the realm of post-encyclopaedism. In the past, critical speculation on encyclopaedism in literature has been concerned with the ways in which artistic texts attempt to live up to the encyclopaedic ideal. In some cases, this effort to establish an identity between the artistic text and the encyclopaedia has led to an ignorance of the disruptive or even deconstructive effects of so-called fictional encyclopaedias. Once we recognize the existence of such effects, we must begin to examine the techniques and possibilities of post-encyclopaedism. Hence we can see post-encyclopaedic qualities in the condensed meta-encyclopaedism of Jorge Luis Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", the disrupted quests for encyclopaedic revelation in Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and the principle of textualized world as fugue in Louis Zukofsky's "A"-12. In addition, we can create a theoretical space for the post-encyclopaedic text by weaving together Mikhail Bakhtin'sideas on the novel as opposed to the epic, Michel Foucault's notion of restructuring the closed circle of the text through mirrored writing, Jurij Lotman's theory of internal and external recoding in texts, and Umberto Eco's concept of the open text. By combining an investigation of theoretical and artistic texts which lend themselves to post-encyclopaedism, we can create a generic distinction between texts which attempt to be encyclopaedic in themselves: and texts which disrupt and/or transform the encyclopaedic ideal<br>Arts, Faculty of<br>English, Department of<br>Graduate

America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury. To recreate the Garden myth, Americans have had to reimagine Eve as the idealized virgin, earth mother and life-giver, or as Adam's loyal helpmeet, the silent figurehead. But Eve resists her new roles: Hester Prynne embellishes her scarlet letter and does not leave Boston; the feminine forces in Moby-Dick defeat the monomaniacal masculinity of Ahab; Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas, and Aunt Sally's threat of civilization chase Huck off to the territory despite the beckoning of the feminine river; Daisy retreats unscathed into her "white palace" after Gatsby's death; and Caddy tours Europe on the arm of a Nazi officer long after Quentin's suicide, Benjy's betrayal, and Jason's condemnation. Each of these male writers--Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner--deals with the American dream differently; however, in each case the dream fails because Eve will not go away, refusing to be the Other, the scapegoat, or the muse to man's dreams. These works all deal in some way with the notion of the masculine American dream of perfection in the Garden at the expense of a fully realized feminine presence. This failure of the American dream accounts for the decidedly tragic tone of these culturally significant American novels.

The quest is an archetypal theme of myth and literature, one which indicates the dreams, ideas and beliefs of a society. Our myths, and our literature, contribute to the way we are today, how we are shaped, how we think, and how we act. "Intentionally, or accidentally, [they have] been a major source of the models used to perpetuate our past". Much can be learnt from the wisdoms of these stories. However, we need to be aware of the fact that the dominant recorders of society's myths, literature, and history, including the Bible, have been men who, in many instances, have been able to achieve political and social ends by the manipulation of these recordings. Today we have the patriarchal, technocratic, inverted quest for domination and 'progress' at the cost of nature; and opposed to this, the ecosophic quest: that of "ecologically wise action and ecological wisdom" which seeks to regain harmony and egalitarian relationships between man and man, man and woman, and humankind and nature. The questers of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab and Ishmael, in their opposite roles (one heading towards disaster and the other towards survival) can be seen to represent the two kinds of quests described. Ahab is the tragic hero-quester. He is capable of greatness but is flawed by hubris and his dark desire for vengeance against the whale which has dismembered him, Moby Dick. Ishmael, the narrator of the novel, turns away from Ahab's mad, inverted quest. His progressive insights, his bonding with his dark partner, and his acknowledgement of the whale as a fellow being, contribute to his 'democratic' attitude and to his survival. It is through Ishmael's eyes that we see Melville's "ecological, cosmic democracy". If we are to change our direction from its present course, which seems to be one directed towards disaster, we need to learn from the past, but with a reminder of how the past has been transmitted to us. We need to actively strive towards reshaping our future, so that we perpetuate archetypes that are nature oriented. We need to consciously re-verse and re-quest a shaping of our present and our future, bearing in mind Melville's reminder of the "obstinate survival of old beliefs". Change will occur only with a change of our thinking patterns: The borders of our minds are ever shifting And many minds can flow into one another ... And create or reveal a single mind, a single energy. (W.B.Yeats).