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Treichel, Tamara. ""And so hell's probable" : Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and "Pierre" as descent narratives /." Trier : WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2009. http://www.wvttrier.de.
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Treichel, Tamara. ""And so hell's probable" Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Pierre as descent narratives." Trier Wiss. Verl. Trier, 2008. http://www.wvttrier.de.
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Hänssgen, Eva. "Herman Melvilles 'Moby-Dick' und das antike Epos /." Tübingen : G. Narr, 2003. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb390763590.
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Gambarotto, Bruno. "Modernidade e mistificação em Moby-Dick, de Herman Melville." Universidade de São Paulo, 2012. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8151/tde-14032013-104328/.
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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.
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Ott, Sara. "Paradox and philosophical anticipation in Melville’s Moby-Dick." Thesis, Wichita State University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10057/385.
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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)
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Schlarb, Damien Brian Melville Herman. "Melville's quest for certainty questing and spiritual stability in Herman Melville's Moby dick /." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-12012006-094528/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.<br>Title from title screen. Reiner Smolinski, committee chair; Robert Sattelmeyer, Paul Schmidt, committee members. Electronic text (121 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Apr. 19. 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-121).
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GENIN, ISABELLE. "Les trois traductions francaises de moby-dick de herman melville." Paris 3, 1998. http://www.theses.fr/1998PA030059.
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La these est une etude comparative des trois traductions francaises de moby-dick de h. Melville: celle de jean giono, lucien jacques et joan smith (1941), celle d'armel guerne (1954), et celle d'henriette guex-rolle (1970). L'etude de nombreux exemples est faite du point de vue du lecteur: lecteur anglophone et francophone. Le but est de degager les grandes tendances de chaque texte, de reperer les procedes deformants et de mettre au jour les espaces de creation qui apparaissent dans chaque version. L'ecriture du roman presente d'immenses difficultes pour le traducteur qui doit affronter des contraintes multiples et contradictoires. Sa profusion extreme, son desordre apparent, brisent le cadre exigu du langage pour permettre a melville d'exprimer un monde par essence inexprimable. Les quatre axes de comparaison sont quatre facettes de cette unique demarche, chaque domaine posant, pour les traducteurs, des problemes specifiques. 1) les voix: voix des quakers, voix populaires, voix exotiques et voix des travailleurs de la mer. 2) dire l'indicible: fonctionnant en reseaux sous-jacents ou par agglomerats, les affixes negatifs rappellent au lecteur que moby dick ne peut etre decrit qu'en termes de ce qu'il n'est pas. Associes aux doubles negations, ils creent une zone d'ombre entre les deux poles semantiques d'un mot et de son contraire. 3) l'adjectivation: les nombreux adjectifs sont le reflet de la voix du narrateur qui procede par empilement, associations et connotations. 4) mise en images et en musique: melville favorise les moyens d'expression indirects, mediats, ceux qui transmettent du sens en dehors des rapports conventionnels signifiant/signifie: les metaphores et les figures sonores, rythmiques et iconiques que dessinent les groupes de mots et les phrases<br>This dissertation is a comparative study of the three french translations of moby-dick by melville: that by jean giono, lucien jacques and joan smith (1941), that by armel guerne (1954), and that by henriette guex-rolle (1970). The study of many examples is carried out from the point of view of both the english-speaking and the french-speaking reader. The aim is to show the general tendency of each text, to point out some processes significantly changing the experience of the reader of the translation and to assess the passages where translating becomes creative writing in its own way. The style of the novel makes the translator's task challenging as he has to find a way out of numerous conflicting priorities. The abundance of the language and its apparent disorder enable melville to transcend its limitations and express what is beyond the power of words. The main four lines of comparison are four aspects of that attempt, but each raises specific problems for the translator. 1) voices: the quakers, the uneducated people, the exotic characters and the sailors. 2) words for what is beyond words: negative affixes and double negative forms which blur the frontier between a word and its contrary. 3) adjectives: reflecting the narrator's voice piling up words and connotations. 4) creating images and music: through metaphors, repetitions of words and sounds, word order and sentence patterns
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Recker, Astrid. ""But truth is ever incoherent ..." : dis/continuity in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" /." Heidelberg : Universitäsverlag C. Winter, 2008. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9783825355180.
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Pernelle, Beatrix. "La représentation dans Moby-Dick." Nice, 1993. http://www.theses.fr/1993NICE2019.
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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
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Pino, Morales Cristián. "Moby Dick and trascendental Decadence." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2007. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/110469.
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Jabalpurwala, Inez. "Reading that brow : interpretive strategies and communities in Melville's Moby-dick." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60042.
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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.
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Derail-Imbert, Agnès. "Allures du corps dans Moby-Dick; or The Whale de Herman Melville." Paris 8, 1997. http://www.theses.fr/1997PA081931.
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@Moby-Dick se donne à la fois et contradictoirement comme livre anatomique et anatomie du livre : le corps s'y montre comme la tentation charnelle de l'écriture mais cette inclination est contrariée par la crainte que l'écriture ne sombre dans le mutisme de la chair ou à l'inverse qu'écrit, le corps ne soit sacrifié au monument du livre. Cette étude explore les puissantes tensions qui travaillent ce livre né du prodigieux désir d'incarner un corps colossal, d'en être le sens ultime. . .
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Recker, Astrid. ""But truth is ever incoherent ..." dis/continuity in Herman Melvillesś Moby-Dick." Heidelberg Winter, 2007. http://d-nb.info/989735265/04.
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Dove-Rumé, Janine. "Quête, communication et connaissance étude des "gams" dans "Moby-Dick" or "The Whale" de Herman Melville." Lille 3 : ANRT, 1987. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37597439w.
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Schlarb, Damien Brian. "Melville's Quest for Certainty: Questing and Spiritual Stability in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2006. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/17.
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This paper investigates Herman Melville’s quest for spiritual stability and certainty in his novel Moby-Dick. The analysis establishes a philosophical tradition of doubt towards the Bible, outlining the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, Benedict de Spinoza, David Hume, Thomas Paine and John Henry Newman. This historical survey of spiritual uncertainty establishes the issue of uncertainty that Melville writes about in the nineteenth century. Having assessed the issue of doubt, I then analyze Melville’s use of metaphorical charts, which his characters use to resolve this issue. Finally, I present Melville’s philosophical findings as he expresses them through the metaphor of whaling. Here, I also scrutinize Melville’s depiction of nature, as well as his presentation of the dichotomy between contemplative and active questing, as represented by the characters Ishmael and Ahab.
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Figueira, Vinicius Duarte. "Jornada rumo ao crepúsculo : uma leitura nietzschiana de Moby-Dick." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/10975.
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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.
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Dove-Rumé, Janine. "Quête, communication et connaissance : étude des "Gams" dans Moby-Dick ; or, The Whale de Herman Melville." Paris 8, 1986. http://www.theses.fr/1987PA080053.
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Il existe dans Moby-Dick; or, The Whale de Herman Melville, ecrit en 1851, neuf rencontres entre baleiniers en mer. Ces rencontres designees sous le nom de "gams" ne correspondent nullement a la definition donnee par melville. Par une etude textuelle approfondie, je montre que ces "gams" depassent le cadre de la narration pour s'inscrire dans une trame symbolique complexe; qu'ils representent, en quelque sorte, une miniaturisation du roman dans son ensemble; et que leur message profond est en relation etroite avec le probleme de l'ecriture et du langage, problemes qui font l'objet de mon introduction. La "White whale" constitue leur objectif commun, et a travers elle, Melville pose des problemes fondamentaux sur la creation, la transcendance, la vie et la mort, l'absence et le neant. Les "gams" s'inscrivent dans une trajectoire initiatique qui concerne aussi bien le narrateur que le lecteur, et forment un ensemble tres structure. A travers le ludique qui les caracterise, l'auteur renverse les valeurs de la civilisation judeo-chretienne pour refaire le monde a sa facon. Monde dans lequel ce qui est rejete par la societe occidentale-reprouves et excrements par exemple-- est dote de connotations posi- tives et sacrees. Le systeme digestif a une place de choix au sein de la symbolique des "gams" et, a la lumiere de recoupements divers-- gnose, alchimie et mythes de la digestion-- je montre que Melville tente d'abolir des poles apparemment divergents tels l'humain et le divin, le materiel et le spirituel. Le narrateur, parti a la recherche d'un transcendant, decouvrira son unite dans les limites memes de l'ex- perience humaine et de la matiere. Les neuf rencontres du pequod sont caracterisees par l'absence de communication, mais le mot "gam" lui ( qui ne signifie pas rencontre), symbolise une coincidentia oppositorum de la communication initiatique entre elements opposes<br>In Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, written by Herman Melville, in 1851, the pequod meets nine other ships at sea. The meetings, supposed to be "gams", do not correspond to Melville's definition of the word. Through a detailed study of the text, i try to show that the gams are to be viewed beyond the narrative frame properly speaking, that they are very well structured, and that they represent the book in miniature. They are closely related to the problems of language and writing, which constitute the main part of my introduction. The meaning of the white whale is their main objective, and through that quest, the narrator questions whiteness, creation, transcendence, life and death, absence and nothingness. Both narrator and reader are involved in the initiatic path imposed by the gams. Through the play atmosphere that pervades the gam-chapters, the narrator topples judeo-christian values to build a world of his own in which he rehabilitates whatever is rejected by western traditions, e. G. Castaways and faeces. At the heart of the symbolic web of the gams, is the digestive process, which melville elaborates fully, and, through cross-checkings with gnosis, alchemy and digestion myths, as well as through the christ image, he attempts at abolishing any dichotomy between the human and the divine, matter and spirit etc. In his search for the transcendent, the narrator will discover his own unity and identity within the limits of human experience and of matter. If the nine meetings of the pequod are characterized by the absence of any communication, the word "gam", different in meaning, symbolizes coincidentia oppositorum and initiatic communication between opposite poles
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Mittermaier, Sten. "The Intolerableness of All Earthly Effort : of Futility and Ahab as the Absurd Hero in Melville's Moby Dick." Thesis, Stockholm University, Department of English, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-8324.
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<p>In 1942, Algerian writer Albert Camus published a philosophical essay called The Myth of Sisyphus along with a fictional counterpart, The Stranger, wherein he presumed the human condition to be an absurd one. This, Camus claimed, was the result of the absence of a god, and consequently of any meaning beyond life itself. Without a god, without an entity greater than man, man has no higher purpose than himself and he himself is inevitably transient. As such, man, so long as he lives, is cursed with the inability to create or partake in anything lasting. The absurd is life without a tomorrow, a life of futility. As one of the main precursors of this view of life and of the human experience, Camus mentioned Herman Melville and Captain Ahab’s chase for the white whale - Moby Dick.</p><p>Now, as will be indicated in the following, the most common critical position holds that the white whale of Moby-Dick, Melville’s magnum opus, is to be interpreted as a symbol of God, and thus Ahab’s chase is tragic by virtue of its impossibility for success. As such, the tragedy is entailed by the futility vis-à-vis its impermanence. However, the ambiguity of Moby-Dick allows for the possibility of several alternative interpretations as to the role of the whale: for instance that of the devil, evil incarnate or merely a "dumb brute". As such, Ahab’s quest might as well be the pursuit of a creature which understands nothing of vengeance, thus rendering his objective equally, if not more fruitless, than the pursuit of a god.</p>
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Graham, Andrew Lindsay. "Federalism and fiction in the United States Constitution and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick." Thesis, Keele University, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.359159.
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Evans, David B. "Scepticism at sea : Herman Melville and philosophical doubt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a842c507-0efc-4b73-9aaa-ccc36f54a7a5.
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This thesis explores Herman Melville’s relationship to sceptical philosophy. By reading Melville’s fictions of the 1840s and 1850s alongside the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, I seek to show that they manifest by turns expression, rebuttal, and mitigated acceptance of philosophical doubt. Melville was an attentive reader of philosophical texts, and he refers specifically to concepts such as Berkeleyan immaterialism and the Kantian “noumenon”. But Melville does not simply dramatise pre-existing theories; rather, in works such as Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre he enacts sceptical and anti-sceptical ideas through his literary strategies, demonstrating their relevance in particular regions of human experience. In so doing he makes a substantive contribution to a philosophical discourse that has often been criticised – by commentators including Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift – for its tendency to abstraction. Melville’s interest in scepticism might be read as part of a wider cultural response to a period of unprecedented social and political change in antebellum America, and with this in mind I compare and contrast his work with that of Dickinson, Douglass, Emerson, and Thoreau. But in many respects Melville’s distinctive and original treatment of scepticism sets him apart from his contemporaries, and in order to fully make sense of it one must range more widely through the canons of philosophy and literature. His exploration of the ethical consequences of doubt in The Piazza Tales, for example, can be seen to anticipate with remarkable precision the theories of twentieth-century thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Stanley Cavell. I work chronologically though selected prose from the period 1849-1857, paying close attention to the textual effects and philosophical allusions in each work. In so doing I hope to offer fresh ways of looking at Melville’s handling of literary form and the wider shape of his career. I conclude with reflections on how Melville’s normative emphasis on the acknowledgement of epistemological limitation might inform the practice of literary criticism.
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Calor, Viviane Cristine. "Vagar e navegar: pelo mar de Melville e o sertão de Rosa. Estudo Comparativo entre Moby-Dick e Grande Sertão: veredas." Universidade de São Paulo, 2011. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8149/tde-26032012-181440/.
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Embora haja um intervalo de mais de um século entre a publicação de Moby-Dick (1851) e a de Grande sertão: veredas (1956), o romance de João Guimarães Rosa apresenta, quer na forma, quer no conteúdo ou em seus respectivos desdobramentos alegóricos, muitos pontos em comum com o livro de Herman Melville. Produtos de literaturas periféricas de países ainda em processo de formação, essas obras são narrativas híbridas que não se encaixam na concepção original do romance moderno europeu (ou novel): ambas resgatam e transformam a épica e a tragédia, os chamados gêneros altos, para dar voz a um indivíduo que, à margem da sociedade de seu tempo, erra por um vasto espaço inóspito enquanto empenha-se em combates mortais. O propósito deste estudo é analisar, sob um ponto de vista comparativo, passos de Moby-Dick e Grande sertão: veredas, divididos de acordo com os gêneros literários que abarcam e, destacando semelhanças e diferenças, propor Moby-Dick, livro que Guimarães Rosa tinha em sua biblioteca pessoal, como uma das fontes inspiradoras do Grande sertão.<br>Although written more than a century apart, American Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851) and Brazilian João Guimarães Rosas The Devil do Pay in the Backlands (1956) sharewhether in format, content, and even in their allegorical significancemany common traits. As products of peripheral literatures of countries undergoing a formative process, both are hybrid narratives that do not fit into the original concept of the European novel; their authors resort to, and transform, the so-called high genres, the epic and the tragedy, to give voice to an individual who, at the margin of the society of his time, wanders through a vast and hostile space whilst engaged in lethal combats. In telling his memories, that individual also outlines a survey of the society from which he is excluded, mixing his history with that of his country. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare extracts from Moby-Dick and The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, divided according to the literary genres that both used and transformed, and, by highlighting similarities and differences, identify Moby-Dick, a book that Rosa had in his personal library, as one of the literary sources for The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.
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Chodat, Robert. "Games of circles : dialogic irony in Carlyle's Sartor resartus, Melville's Moby Dick, and Thoreau's Walden." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23713.
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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.
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Midan, Marc. "Milton & Melville : le démon de l'allusion." Paris 7, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014PA070086.
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Milton & 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 & 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
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Pritchard, Gregory R., and mikewood@deakin edu au. "Econstruction: The nature/culture opposition in texts about whales and whaling." Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts, 2004. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20050826.111722.
Full textAbstract:
A perceived opposition between 'culture' and 'nature', presented as a dominant, biased and antagonistic relationship, is engrained in the language of Western culture. This opposition is reflected in, and adversely influences, our treatment of the ecosphere. I argue that through the study of literature, we can deconstruct this opposition and that such an ecocritical operation is imperative if we are to avoid environmental catastrophe. I examine the way language influences our relationship with the world and trace the historical conception of nature and its influence on the English language. The whale is, for many people, an important symbol of the natural world, and human interaction with these animals is an indication of our attitudes to the natural world in general. By focusing on whale texts (including older narratives, whaling books, novels and other whale-related texts), I explore the portrayal of whales and the natural world. Lastly, I suggest that Schopenhaurean thought, which has affinities in Moby-Dick, offers a cogent approach to ecocritically reading literature.
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Ramírez, Paredes Roberto Marcos. "Ese aire de mágico aislamiento: Herman Melville y la construcción de Latinoamérica en el siglo XIX." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/673683.
Full textAbstract:
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.
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Angeles, Marie. "On the Matter of God’s Goodness: An Examination of the Failure of Theodicies, Herman Melville, and an Alternative Approach to the Problem of Evil." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/475.
Full textAbstract:
Within Judeo-Christianity there is a belief in an all perfect God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. However, in this world evil and suffering exists, so how is it possible that an all perfect God can exist? This is called the problem of evil. This thesis examines the problem of evil and how philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, John Hick, and Richard Swinburne attempt to solve the problem of evil through different theodicies. In this paper I argue that all three philosophers and their theodicies fail to solve the problem of evil. I then turn to the writings of Herman Melville, specifically Mardi: and a Voyage Thither and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, and consider how he, as an author, struggled with the problem of evil and religion. While Melville may have struggled I argue that within his works we can find part of the solution to the problem of evil. Through these two novels Melville demonstrates that God is not good. My final chapter considers this fact that God is not good and also considers how God is not evil. In the end I argue that God is neither good nor evil which allows us to no longer have to face the problem of evil.
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Wright, Andrew James. "Dialecticism and 'negativity' in Melville, Kafka and Blanchot : a literature and language of conflict." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2009. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/28213.
Full textAbstract:
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.
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Wilkins, Peter Duncan. "The transformation of the circle : an exploration of the post-encyclopaedic text." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26939.
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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
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Angeletti, Valerio. "La disciplina dell’esule: la letteratura comparata in America tra esilio e utopia e il caso studio Paolo Milano." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/349476.
Full textAbstract:
Lo studio ha riflettuto su alcune costanti della letteratura comparata che accomunano tale disciplina all’esilio, quando chi lo vive è in grado di contrastare i molti traumi che esso può comportare.L’emigrazione intellettuale avvenuta nel corso degli anni Trenta e Quaranta è l’evento storico a cui lo studio ha fatto riferimento. Costringendo molti intellettuali ad abbandonare i propri posti di lavoro e le proprie case, questa emigrazione ha contribuito a una notevole mobilitazione culturale soprattutto dall’Europa verso gli Stati Uniti d’America, dove ha cominciato a svilupparsi una nuova comparatistica sovranazionale e reazionaria. L’espressione “disciplina dell’esule” suggerisce un provocatorio inquadramento del modo di vedere e affrontare il testo come il mondo: crisi, apertura verso il nuovo e inclusività sono solo alcune parole chiave che, contraddistinguendo tanto la letteratura comparata quanto l’esilio, permettono di chiarire senso e prospettive di entrambe. Si è anche affermato che un tale atteggiamento ha come presupposto due processi culturali che sono caratterizzati da una spiccata dinamicità e disponibilità al cambiamento: la denazionalizzazione della scienza e l’ibridazione del sapere. Senza di essi non avrebbe potuto formalizzarsi una comparatistica “disciplina dell’esule”, da questo punto di vista intesa come un’utopica reazione a un percorso storico tendente sempre più al nazionalismo e all’esclusione. Lo studio ha infine individuato molte di queste idee e di questi valori nell’opera “americana” di Paolo Milano, intellettuale italiano esule negli Stati Uniti che lì si costruì una carriera come professore di letteratura comparata.
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Myrén, Alexander. "Criticism of Emerson's Transcendentalism in Melville's Moby-Dick." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur (from 2013), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-70906.
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In conceptualizing Moby-Dick; or, the whale, Herman Melville was both drawn and opposed to the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through an analysis of the main characters in MobyDick and Emerson’s writing, it becomes evident that Transcendentalism is embodied in the characterization of the novel’s main characters. I argue that the eventual fates of characters in the novel reveal Melville’s criticism of Emerson’s ideas. Moreover, the depiction of ocean and land as a symbol of the soul in Moby-Dick mirrors Emerson’s idealized relationship between man and nature. However, the ambiguous and horrific nature Melville produces shows that the romantic ideal of Emerson’s is lacking.<br>I skrivandet av Moby Dick eller valen så kom Herman Melville att både inspireras av och motsätta sig Ralph Waldo Emersons idéer. Genom en analys av huvudkaraktärerna i Moby Dick samt Emersons texter så är det tydligt att transcendentalism finns förkroppsligad i karaktäriseringen av romanens huvudkaraktärer. Jag argumenterar för att karaktärernas slutgiltiga öden i romanen uttrycker Melvilles kritik av Emersons idéer. Vidare så är skildringen av hav och land som en symbol för själen i Moby Dick en spegling av Emersons idealiserade förhållande mellan människa och natur. Emellertid den tvetydiga och fruktansvärda natur Melville skapar visar på bristfälligheten i Emersons romantiska ideal.
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Long, Kim Martin. "The American Eve: Gender, Tragedy, and the American Dream." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1993. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc277633/.
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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.
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Peters, Matthias. "Moby-Dick als Leerstelle und romantische Chiffre für die Aporie eines transzendentalen Signifikats." Master's thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2010. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2010/4307/.
Full textAbstract:
Die Arbeit unternimmt den Versuch, Melvilles Moby-Dick als einen Vorboten postmoderner Literarizität in den Blick zu nehmen, der in seiner Autoreferentialität den eigenen textuellen Status kritisch-ironisierend reflektiert und Sprache als einen krisenhaften Zugang zu Welt und Kosmos ins Spiel bringt. Sie legt dar, dass Melvilles opus magnum ein im Verlaufe der abendländischen Philosophie epistemologisch und semiologisch virulent gewordenes Krisenbewusstsein vom "Phantasma der Umfassung der Wirklichkeit" (Lyotard) einerseits auf inhaltlicher und andererseits autoreferentiell auf der Ebene der écriture inszeniert. Entsprechend wird davon ausgegangen, dass die vom Text absorbierten Diskurse in ihrer schieren Vielzahl nicht als partikulare Bezüge hermeneutisch isoliert werden können, sondern stattdessen in ihrer Heterogenität selbst die zentrale Problematik illustrieren, in deren Dienst sie als konstitutive Elemente stehen: Statt positiven Sinn zu stiften, verunmöglichen sie jegliche interpretatorische Direktive und verweisen dadurch auf eine dem Roman inhärente negative Dimension von Sinn – sie sind also vielmehr Bestandteile eines verhandelten Problems als dessen Lösung.
Nicht nur in den cetologischen Abschnitten des Romans – gleichwohl dort am offenkundigsten – lässt sich Melvilles spielerisch-dekonstruktiver Umgang mit westlichen Wissens- und Denkmodellen erkennen: Dringt man in ahabischer Manie(r) in das semantische Feld des Romans auf der Suche nach einem letzten Grund, einer inferentiellen Letztbegründung, gerät man in einen infiniten regressiven Strudel, der jede getroffene semantische Arretierung auf die Bedingungen ihrer Möglichkeit hin befragt und dadurch wieder aufbricht. Eine ishmaelische Lektüre des Moby-Dick bestünde darin, den Anspruch auf Letztbegründetheit im Sinne der différance Derridas aufzuschieben und sich damit der Gravitation eines transzendentalen Signifikats zu entziehen. Liest man die cetologischen Kapitel vor diesem Hintergrund, kann man in ihnen – so eine der zentralen Thesen der Arbeit – eine autoreferentielle Kontrastfolie erkennen, eine negative Exemplifikation dessen, wie sich der Moby-Dick nicht erfassen lässt: gewissermaßen eine Lektüreanleitung ex negativo.
Wesentliche Merkmale der Melvilleschen écriture sind Ambivalenz, Parodie und Dialogizität. Er verwendet stilistische und motivische Versatzstücke, destruiert sie und unterläuft so permanent die Ernsthaftigkeit der den Roman strukturierenden Schicksalszeichen wie auch die interpretativen Anstrengungen des Lesers. Die Autorität des eigenen Diskurses wird ironisch unterminiert und der Text damit in einer Schwebe zwischen Parodie und Monomanie, Unabschließbarkeit und Universalanspruch gehalten. Als die figurativen Kraftfelder dieser konkurrierenden Paradigmen stehen Ahab und Ishmael auf der Handlungsebene personifizierend für die paradoxe Konstellation des gesamten Textes, der nicht die Auflösung oder Aufhebung seiner konfliktiven Elemente sucht, sondern als ästhetischer Ausdruck des Paradoxen feste Orientierungspunkt vorenthält. Anstatt beide Figuren und die ihnen zugrundeliegenden epistemologischen Strategien antagonistisch in Opposition zueinander zu stellen, begreift diese Arbeit sie als komplementäre Elemente eines romantischen Metatextes, der sie in eine konfliktive Rezeption einfasst. In Analogie zum Konzept der romantischen Ironie Friedrich Schlegels wird Ahab hierbei als prototypischer Allegorisierer begriffen, wohingegen Ishmael als Ironiker für die Relativierung derartig monomanischer Kraftakte steht – zwischen Anspannung und Abspannung, Unbedingtem und Bedingtem baut sich jene Dynamik auf, die den gesamten Text durchwaltet.
Im Sinne der romantischen Universalpoesie ist der Moby-Dick nicht auf einen systemischen Abschluss hin orientiert, sondern besteht auf/aus seiner Unabschließbarkeit: Heterogenität, Inkonsequenz, Verworrenheit und mitunter Unverständlichkeit sind demnach keine Folgen kompositorischer Nachlässigkeit, sondern in ihrer Gesamtheit als das performative Moment der eigentlichen Mitteilung zu begreifen.
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Smith, Alana. "Cutting the Gordian Knot: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!" ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2018. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/911.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives.
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Spencer, Benjamin Paul. "Memory Machines: Exploring Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow Through the History of Film." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/31492.
Full textAbstract:
For close to a decade, I have weighed comparative approaches to â the Great American Novelâ . Progress increased as soon as I resolved on selecting Moby-Dick as the work originally responsible for issuing that slogan. Making this particular selection required the application of a dynamic concept which, appropriately, reflects critiques of knowledge production: â the Archiveâ . Perhaps the most direct references to a conceptual archive appear in Derridaâ s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, which addresses the dual forces â preservation/destructionâ that influence allegory and mythology.
Other critical writers refer to a similar concept through various other terms, ultimately equipping my thesis with a method for studying the relation between myth and allegory. The method draws from each writerâ s focus on the form and content dynamics of artifacts, and how these dynamics reflect the historical conditions that affirm or produce them. Specifically, all the writers I have selected to study, in some way consider the play between the mechanical apparatus and the representation it produces. Thus, I concluded that my literary comparative approach could involve juxtaposing a different, historically concurrent mode of documentation: film media and photography.
Gravityâ s Rainbow is often considered, after Moby-Dick, the most universally-recognized â Great American Novelâ . Pynchon spends a lot of time referring to mass-produced films, their effects on the global order emerging with WWII, and to the material occurrence of film technology as it relates to the book as a material artifact. For Pynchon, the backlots built up by such â greatsâ as D.W. Griffith constitute the twentieth-century frontier.<br>Master of Arts
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Collberg, Jonas. "Peqoud." Thesis, Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen Textilhögskolan, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-17075.
Full textAbstract:
Pequod - is an exploration of the translation problem. And an idea to examine the myth of"why the book is always better than the movie."The work began by choosing a character to interpret. My choice was the characteristicCaptain Ahab and his mono manic quest for revenge. The character is taken from HermanMenvilles classic novel "Moby Dick" or "The White wale" from 1851.In order to interpret the character differently, I picked out passages from the novel thatdirectly describes the first sight of the character. And also a paragraph describing thecharacter's inner thoughts and ideas about their environment.I did a survey of the descriptions with leading questions about the character's outfit,garments, materials, colours and accessories. I handle out the survey to 15 creative personsand asked them to interpret the character for me, but also make a quick sketch of him.The participants was totally unaware of witch character it was all about.<br>Program: Modedesignutbildningen
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Casati, Rafael. "Caracterização tafonômica das concentrações fossilíferas da Formação Cape Melville, Grupo Moby Dick (Mioceno Inferior), Ilha Rei George, Antártica." Universidade de São Paulo, 2007. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/44/44139/tde-19122007-101537/.
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Trabalhos objetivando a tafonomia de concentrações fossilíferas geradas em ambiente glacial ou periglacial são raros. Neste contexto, a presente dissertação realizou a caracterização tafonômica das concentrações fossilíferas da Formação Cape Melville, Grupo Moby Dick (Mioceno Inferior), Ilha Rei George, Antártica, tendo em vista a elucidação da gênese destes depósitos. Para tanto, dados relativos a um total de 534 espécimes foram obtidos nas camadas ricamente fossilíferas das quatro seções, denominadas Pingüineira (PRS), Hard Ground (HGS), Chaminé (CS) e Lava Crag (LCS), levantadas no topo da Península Melville entre Janeiro e Fevereiro de 2003. Destas, apenas a Seção PRS apresenta duas camadas fossilíferas distintas (PRS-C1 e PRS-C2). A fauna estudada é composta predominantemente por restos de moluscos bivalves. Restos menos abundantes de corais, caranguejos, gastrópodes e braquiópodes, além de icnofósseis, também estão presentes. A análise da composição taxonômica, ecológica e tafonômica permitiu identificar semelhanças entre as Seções PRS e HGS e entre as Seções CS e LCS. As seções PRS e HGS são compostas dominantemente por bivalves depositívoros da infauna rasa (Ennucula frigida, Enncula musculosa e Yoldia peninsularis), preservados preferencialmente com as valvas articuladas fechadas, porém fora da posição de vida, indicando remobilização da fauna pré-soterramento; a ausência de sinais de fragmentação, abrasão e incrustação indica que os bioclastos não foram afetados por processos bioestratinômicos químicos, físicos ou biológicos intensos. A ocorrência de bioclastos piritizados na Seção HGS é interpretada como resultante da decomposição dos organismos soterrados, ainda vivos, em ambiente anóxico. As assembléias das seções CS e LCS são constituídas dominantemente por bivalves suspensívoros da infauna profunda (Neilo (N.) rongelii), preservados preferencialmente com as valvas desarticuladas, indicando que os processos bioestratinômicos físicos foram mais atuantes, sendo, no entanto, raros os sinais de fragmentação e de outras assinaturas tafonômicas como incrustação e bioerosão. As valvas desarticuladas estão preservadas preferencialmente com a convexidade voltada para baixo indicando que os bioclastos foram colocados em suspensão e redepositados fora da posição de maior estabilidade hidrodinâmica; a orientação em planta destes bioclastos exibe direção preferencial, indicando atuação de correntes fracas e um maior tempo de exposição na interface água/sedimento; a ocorrência de raros restos de bivalves suspensívoros escavadores da infauna profunda (Panopea (P.) cf. P. regularis) e de caranguejos (Antarctidromia inflata) preservados em posição de vida é indicativa de que esta comunidade foi soterrada in situ por sedimentos em suspensão que trouxeram a tanatocenose de valvas desarticuladas. Os resultados obtidos no presente estudo reiteram a importância dos estudos tafonômicos e paleoecológicos no entendimento da dinâmica deposicional do passado, contribuindo com um grande conjunto de dados úteis na caracterização de ambientes glaciais e periglaciais.<br>Works focusing on the taphonomy of fossil concentrations generated in glacial or periglacial environment are rare. In this context, the present dissertation carried out the taphonomic characterization of the fossil concentrations of the Cape Melville Formation, Moby Dick Group (Lower Miocene), King George Island, Antarctica, in order to elucidate the genesis of these deposits. To this end, data relative to a total of 534 specimens were obtained in the richly fossil layers of the four sections, called Pingüineira (PRS), Hard Ground (HGS), Chaminé (CS) and Lava Crag (LCS), investigated at the top of the Melville Peninsula between January and February of 2003. Of these, only the PRS Section presents two distinct fossil layers (PRS-C1 and PRS-C2). The studied fauna is mainly composed of remains of bivalve clams. Less abundant remains of corals, crabs, gastropods and brachiopods, as well as trace fossils, also are present. Taxonomic, ecological and taphonomic analyses allowed similarities to be identified between PRS and HGS and CS and LCS. PRS and HGS Sections are dominantly composed by shallow infaunal deposit-feeding bivalves (Ennucula frigida, Enncula musculosa Yoldia peninsularis), preserved preferentially with closed articulated valves, however out of life position, indicating remobilized fauna; the absence of signs of spalling, abrasion and incrustation indicates that the bioclasts were not affected by intense chemical, physical or biological bioestratinomic processes. The occurrence of pyritized bioclasts in HGS is interpreted as the result of decomposition of the entombed organisms, still alive, in an anoxic environment. The assemblages of CS and LCS Sections are dominantly constituted by deep infaunal suspension-feeding bivalves (Neilo (N.) rongelii), preserved preferentially with disarticulated valves, indicating that the physical biostratinomic processes were more operative; however there are few signs of spalling or other taphonomic signatures such as incrustation and bioerosion. Disarticulated valves are preferentially preserved convex down indicating that bioclasts were placed in suspension and redeposited in a position other than that of greatest hydrodynamic stability; the orientation of these bioclasts in plan view shows a preferential direction, indicating weak currents and a longer time of exposition at the water/sediment interface; the occurrence of rare remains of deep infaunal suspension-feeding bivalves (Panopea (P.) cf. P. regularis) and crabs (Antarctidromia inflata) preserved in life position is indicative that this community was entombed in situ by sediments in suspension that brought the thanatocenosis of disarticulated valves. The results obtained in the present study reiterate the importance of taphonomic and paleoecological studies for the understanding of the depositional dynamics of the past and contribute a great number of data useful in the characterization of glacial and periglacial environments.
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Lee, Yonghwa. "Diving Deep for “The Ungraspable Phantom of Life”: Melville’s Philosophical and Aesthetic Inquiries into Human Possibilities in Moby-Dick." The Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1243629090.
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Goodrum, Emily A. "Herman Melville's Moby-Dick : hermeneutics and epistemology in Ishmael's seafaring." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/27534.
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Glover, Albert Dale Kirby David. "Ceci n'est pas une Baleine surrealist images in Moby-Dick /." 2003. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-09012003-000022.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003.<br>Advisor: Dr. David Kirby, Florida State University, School of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 29, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.
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Jenkins, M. "The archetypal quest and Moby-Dick : Melville's "ecological, cosmic democracy"." Thesis, 1993. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/20304/1/whole_Jenkins1993_thesis.pdf.
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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).
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Patterson, Lena. "Melville's Oriental Parsee: Reimagining Fedallah as Reader and Sign in Moby-Dick." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10222/13069.
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Published in 1851, Moby-Dick is audaciously experimental and defiantly unique for its time. Many scholars attribute problematic aspects of the book to this authorial ambition, and for the Melville critic, the figure of Fedallah is one of those problems. This study aims to explore how the Oriental character, Fedallah, operates within the larger world of reading and interpretation in Moby-Dick. Major critics of the past have struggled to reconcile the Parsee’s shadowy essence with the materiality of the whale ship, and have interpreted this figure as an evil force, or often bluntly, a devil. However, like many other subjects in the book, Fedallah evades definition. This thesis explores the idea that Fedallah is not an inconsequential bystander to the action, but a character of significant depth and feeling, and an active participant in the interpolated questing and prophetic narratives that lie at the heart of Moby-Dick.
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Chen, Jui-fen, and 陳瑞芬. "Balancing Romanticism and Calvinism in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick." Thesis, 2014. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48755403317517021214.
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碩士<br>國立中央大學<br>英美語文學系<br>102<br>Abstract
Moby-Dick confronts certain philosophical issues, such as the struggle between good and evil, the existence of God and the pursuit of truth in a dualistic world. Melville challenges the lofty ambitions of mainstream Romanticism through the character of Ahab and initiates a rebellion against the Romantic spirit and Calvinism. This thesis traces the origins of Melville’s rebellion in the context of the social and political milieu of his age; especially, it compares with T. W. Herbert’s interpretation of Melville’s Calvinism to reexamine the intertwined and ambiguous relationship between them in Moby-Dick. Melville seems to suggest a middle path between humanity and God, sensibility and reason, good vs. evil, and life vs. death. In addition, Melville detects a potential danger of bringing about an enormous destructive force in Byronic heroism, if combined with authoritarianism. Melville is both skeptical of Romanticism and Calvinism, and proposes the middle path in a dualistic world. Chapter two examines issues generated by meeting of transcendental idealism, such as independence and self-reliance with the extremes of Calvinism. Chapter three contextualizes and reexamines the spirit of Romanticism in the text. Melville’s skeptical attitude toward Calvinism will be tackled in chapter four. Chapter five concludes by suggesting the Melville posits a middle path between the extremes of Romantic transcendentalism and Calvinistic determinism.
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Neuburger, Hendrika. "Stepson of heaven : an analysis of Herman Melville's Redburn, Moby-Dick, Pierre." Thesis, 1993. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/4312/1/MM84636.pdf.
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Three of Herman Melville's works (Redburn, Moby-Dick, Pierre) are approached as related works of art--a triptych. The sustained application of images, symbols, concepts and themes links the works together. The development and intensification of themes introduced in the first panel is traced through the triptych. Colour symbolism is considered of importance, providing one of several strong connections between the independent works. The main theme, the quest for truth, which runs through the three panels and which is metaphorically presented in three separate voyages, is kept in the foreground; it is linked to an allegory of the biblical banishment of the son by the father, Melville's use of the Bible as a source of ideas, symbols and themes is given ample consideration. Influence on Melville's work from autobiographical, as well as from social, religious and/or political directions is regarded as an important agent in the shaping of Melville's mind and spirit. The thesis concludes that, despite the blackness of despair that flow through the triptych and Melville's personal nihilistic outlook, life, in the end, triumphs.
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Tsai, Chi, and 蔡琦. "The Power of Being:The Multiplicity of Life in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick." Thesis, 2017. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ngv65z.
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碩士<br>國立臺灣師範大學<br>英語學系<br>105<br>My thesis aims to take Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick to explore Jacques Derrida’s theory to elucidate the power of Being. I take Martin Heidegger’s definition of the notion of Dasein to demonstrate the relevance of “presence,” which I use in my thesis to illustrate the multiplicity of life in Moby-Dick. I take Heidegger’s assertion on presence to construct the idea of self-presence and further reveal how the features of self-presence are distinguished from and related to those of Being.
The thesis consists of four chapters. In the Introduction and Chapter 1, I illustrate how the literary act (reading and writing) generates a virtual reality in the reader that exists concurrently with the reader’s actual reality in life. I further take Ishmael’s presence in the virtual reality to expound that the reader generates the imaginary life form of “I am,” the character Ishmael. In the process of replacing the presence-identity, the reader comes to understand that the necessity of the presence is derived from the absence and existence of Being. The narrative form that Melville creates aligns the position of the author to be similar to that of Being. The self-referential quality that Melville creates in Moby-Dick generates a relationship with the only one book that is mentioned in Derrida’s Writing and Difference.
In Chapter 2, I take Michel Foucault’s theory to discuss how the madness of Captain Ahab constructs his power in Moby-Dick. Ahab’s power originates from his searching for subjectivity. In Chapter 3, I use Edward W. Said’s discussion on American imperialism to illustrate the literary metaphor of Moby Dick and the Pequod. In the political aspect, the literary metaphor can be viewed as the epitome of fascism and American imperialism. Concurrently, I explore how the power-space that the whaling ships construct marks the phenomenon of globalization. I also discuss the relations with cultural power and political power.
In the fourth chapter, I take Giorgio Agamben’s theory to discuss the bare life, which is generated from the state of exception. I use the power of the law formed by the vow on the Pequod to discuss how the bare life pertains to the sovereignty of mankind. The sovereignty of life generates from the desire to liberate the self-presence. To liberate this predicament in Moby-Dick, I elaborate on my interpretation of the literary act. I take Agamben’s messianic issues to create messianic time in reading. This messianic time appears when the literary act has been completed, which generates the time-space of the now. This fulfills the life form that employs the Being of the subject within-life-itself. This is the oneness of life. The virtual reality and actual reality that interact during the literary act give birth to the significance of time as being the Being.
Keywords: Being, presence, life, power, madness, messianic time
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Paley, Samuel Gordon. "The rhetoric of the primitive savior in Cooper's The deerslayer, Melville's Moby Dick and Hawthorne's The scarlet letter and The Blithedale romance /." 2005. http://www.consuls.org/record=b2731413.
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Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005.<br>Thesis advisor: John A. Heitner. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-155). Also available via the World Wide Web.
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Schlarb, Damien Brian. "“THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS." 2016. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/161.
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This study examines how Herman Melville’s oeuvre interacts with Old Testament (OT) wisdom literature (the Books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes). Using recent historical findings on the rise of religious skepticism and the erosion of Biblical authority in both Europe and the United States, I read Melville as an author steeped in the theological controversies of the eighteenth-century. Specifically, I am interested in teasing out the surprising disavowals of overt religious skepticism in Melville’s writing. By tracing the so-called Solomonic wisdom tradition throughout Melville’s oeuvre, I argue that Melville had developed an epistemology of contemplation towards that body of Biblical texts. Scholarship has traditionally painted Melville as a subversive if not downright skeptical religious thinker. Most studies have produced authorial readings, using texts as forensic evidence to make assertions about the author’s psychology. Incidentally, such assessments have confirmed the narrative of Herman Melville as a grand failed author of the nineteenth century, while ignoring the ambivalent attitudes toward Biblical authority, textual history, and skepticism that emerge in Melville’s writing. The present study intervenes by re-addressing several procedural questions about Melville’s literary dealings with the Bible: How does Melville deal with the distinct topics of religion, theology, religious skepticism, and doubt? How does he think through the relationship between science and religion as well as that of personal religion and theology? I claim that Melville’s work can be read as a continuous contemplation of Biblical wisdom. His writing, I argue, deals productively rather than a destructive with the Bible, its textual history, and authority. Melville’s thinking on theological and religious subjects was not merely subversive but constructive. In mounting this argument, I contradict current scholarship that reads Melville as trying to invent a new American Bible. In contrast, I show how Melville’s philosophical forays, even when critical, are dependent on the ethics, language, and thinking of the OT.
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Chen, You-ting, and 陳宥廷. "Trauma, Narrative, and Psychoanalysis: Rethinking Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as a Trauma Narrative from the Perspective of Lacanian Psychoanalysis." Thesis, 2017. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/w239f4.
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博士<br>國立臺灣大學<br>外國語文學研究所<br>105<br>In this thesis, I aim to reconsider Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as a trauma narrative, especially from the perspective of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic insights. I argue that both the narrative structure and the narrative strategy—two problems that concern the Melvillean scholars most regarding this novel—are intimately related to trauma. Rethinking the nature of trauma through psychoanalytic concepts such as the real and the object a, in my view, affords an alternative interpretation of the cetological chapters which do not seem to serve the purpose of the survival tale told by the narrator. Meanwhile, it offers a revealing perspective on why he narrates in such a roundabout and circuitous way.
The thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I revisit the problem of narrative identity, with a special interest in retrieving the survivor’s life after the shipwreck. I maintain that the compulsive behavior observed there finds its way into the narrative. To advance our understanding of this behavior, I move on to investigate how the concept of the compulsion to repeat is analyzed in psychoanalysis, with an aim of examining how Lacan reformulates this concept and bears it on trauma. Trauma, as Lacan characterizes, is the missed encounter with the real. The subsequent chapter is devoted to exploring how this missed encounter produces a traumatic residue which functions like the Lacanian concept of the object a. This special object appears in the form of the whale and becomes an object of obsession both in the survivor’s life and in his narrative. And I argue it is in his narrative that we see a full display of the unconscious desire to capture, or to represent, the object a as the gaze. In the final chapter, I set out to dissect the elaborate signifying practice the narrator deploys with a view to not only capturing the whale in his mind but also subjugating the object a to the signifying chain. What incurs is a battle between the eye and the gaze, and what confront the narrator at the end of his narration are the annihilating effects of the gaze. To conclude this thesis, I reflect on how the narrative can be regarded as both a personal tragedy and a universal experience.
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Rossouw, Leon Armand. "The motif of the water journey as a metaphor for philosophical enquiry in selected novels of Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10539/2174.
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Student Number : 7639580 -
MA research report -
Faculty of Humanities<br>This research report explores the motif of the water journey as a metaphor for philosophical
enquiry in Melville and Conrad by comparing Moby-Dick with Heart of Darkness, and Billy
Budd, Sailor with Lord Jim. It takes as its starting-point M.H. Abrams’s essay, “Spiritual
Travelers in Western Literature”, and adapts the typology which he introduces by identifying
four different kinds of fictional journey, namely, the physical, the experiential, the narrative and
the hermeneutic. By concentrating on a broadly-based semiotic approach to interpretation
(while also allowing for other critical possibilities), it examines Melville and Conrad’s
treatment of certain pivotal issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. It compares the
narrative strategies of the two authors and, by offering close readings of the four texts under
discussion, it highlights the similarities and differences in the authors’ responses to a universe
of teasing complexity, as well as exploring the reader’s engagement with such texts.
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Li, Richard, and 李延熹. "From Discovery to Self-Discovery: A Study of Four Adventure Stories: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Conrad' Heart of Darkness, Jack London's The Sea-Wolf, and Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/01258229559159358081.
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碩士<br>國立中正大學<br>外國語文學系<br>84<br>In this thesis, I shall attempt to illustrate the common
features of four first-person sea and African adventure stories
that mark them as belonging to what I propose to call the novel
of self-discovery, as a subgenre of the novel of adventure.
Their plots feature a journey into the unknown, the
protagonists' confrontation with violence, and their ultimate
return. If we accept the four narrators as the fictional
authors, these four texts operate on two levels; each of them
tells two stories: the story of disaster, and the story of the
narrator's recovering health by composing his own adventure
story. Part One will focus on the survivor-narrator's
motivations for going to sea or to Africa. I will then
interpret the narrators' experiences in the unknown world and
how the narrators are affected by the heroes, in Part Two of my
thesis. Part Three will concentrate on the question whether
the narrators' experiences reshape their original selves.
After these discussions, I will assess the results of my
attempt to describe my four chosen texts as novels of self-
discovery, with specific reference to the idea of the novel as
a bourgeois adaptation of the epic.
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Harrell, Randall W. "Moby-Dick as Proto-Modernist Prophecy." 2015. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses/196.
Full textAbstract:
This project relies on two main bodies of work: the text and reception history of Moby-Dick. I argue that the novel’s prophetic insights unfold in its failure and resurrection. The reception history consists of early reviewers, biographers, and critics both hailing and discounting Moby-Dick’s literary value. The first section, “Proto-Modernist Melville: Specific Difficulty in Moby-Dick,” explores the peculiar difficulty inherent in the text of Moby-Dick, namely its divergent, evasive, and hieroglyphic properties. Chapter 2, “Reception: Nineteenth-Century Failure and Modernist Success,” chronicles the novel’s reception history, focusing largely on the critics of twentieth-century modernism. In “Moby-Dick as Prophetic Anticipation and Fulfillment,” I examine the link between the inherent difficulty found within Moby-Dick and its reception history. I propose that Melville’s novel theorizes its prophetic anticipation of literary modernism as well as Melville’s own authorial failure and redemption narrative.