"In this study Shawn Thomson undertakes a consistent and deliberate approach to the form of the novel in an attempt to allow its elements, organization, and phenomena to answer questions about larger relationships and patterns. Thomson's approach asks: What is the position of the author in relation to the work, what in fact is a center of consciousness, and what is real in Moby-Dick?" "At the center of the approach is an examination of Ahab's enthusiasm and its parallels to Shelley's sense of the Promethean mission of the artist. Shelley exists as an animating presence, enlivening the fundamental oppositions of the novel: the vertical ascension of Ahab's drama and Ishmael's horizontal integration of feeling, thought, and experience." "Thomson explores Ahab's unyielding Romantic imagination - an imagination that will not be obstructed or overshadowed by the gross disorder and catastrophic face of nature. Ahab's passionate idealism is an extension of Shelley's powerful imagination, an obsessive energy that broadens and surpasses Classical and Christian idealism." "Thomson's line of inquiry places Shelley's Romantic ontology in the industrial world and hostile environment of Moby-Dick. Ishmael uses metaphor to create an emergent description of the world, building a knowledge of the whale and defining his perspective of the universe. Ahab shows the failings of inspiration. His being is associated with dominating towers, monumental heights of grandeur, and the mythmaking act. Thomson demonstrates how Melville tests and, ultimately, collapses Shelley's passionate idealism and constructs a new reality in its place." "Borrowing from Oliver Sacks, Shakespeare, Richard Wright, contemporary art criticism, geology, and geography, this study encompasses this eccentric American novel by building upon traditional approaches and bringing new perspectives into the discussion. Thomson blends science, aesthetics, and theory into an absorbing and full reading of Melville's art."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"In this study Shawn Thomson undertakes a consistent and deliberate approach to the form of the novel in an attempt to allow its elements, organization, and phenomena to answer questions about larger relationships and patterns. Thomson's approach asks: What is the position of the author in relation to the work, what in fact is a center of consciousness, and what is real in Moby-Dick?" "At the center of the approach is an examination of Ahab's enthusiasm and its parallels to Shelley's sense of the Promethean mission of the artist. Shelley exists as an animating presence, enlivening the fundamental oppositions of the novel: the vertical ascension of Ahab's drama and Ishmael's horizontal integration of feeling, thought, and experience." "Thomson explores Ahab's unyielding Romantic imagination - an imagination that will not be obstructed or overshadowed by the gross disorder and catastrophic face of nature. Ahab's passionate idealism is an extension of Shelley's powerful imagination, an obsessive energy that broadens and surpasses Classical and Christian idealism." "Thomson's line of inquiry places Shelley's Romantic ontology in the industrial world and hostile environment of Moby-Dick. Ishmael uses metaphor to create an emergent description of the world, building a knowledge of the whale and defining his perspective of the universe. Ahab shows the failings of inspiration. His being is associated with dominating towers, monumental heights of grandeur, and the mythmaking act. Thomson demonstrates how Melville tests and, ultimately, collapses Shelley's passionate idealism and constructs a new reality in its place." "Borrowing from Oliver Sacks, Shakespeare, Richard Wright, contemporary art criticism, geology, and geography, this study encompasses this eccentric American novel by building upon traditional approaches and bringing new perspectives into the discussion. Thomson blends science, aesthetics, and theory into an absorbing and full reading of Melville's art."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This new collection offers timely, critical essays specially commissioned to provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.

Critical Companion to Herman Melville examines the life and work of a writer who spent much of his career in obscurity.

Herman Melville is hailed as one of the greats—if not the greatest—of American literature. Born in New York in 1819, he first achieved recognition for his daring stylistic innovations, but it was Moby-Dick that would win him global fame. In this new critical biography, Kevin J. Hayes surveys Melville’s major works and sheds new light on the writer’s unpredictable professional and personal life. Hayes opens the book with an exploration of the revival of interest in Melville’s work thirty years after his death, which coincided with the aftermath of World War I and the rise of modernism. He goes on to examine the composition and reception of Melville’s works, including his first two books, Typee and Omoo, and the novels, short fiction, and poetry he wrote during the forty years after the publication of Moby-Dick. Incorporating a wealth of new information about Melville’s life and the times in which he lived, the book is a concise and engaging introduction to the life of a celebrated but often misunderstood writer.

An accessible and highly readable guide to the story of Melville criticism as it has developed over the past century and a half. Herman Melville is among the most thoroughly canonized authors in American literature, and the body of criticism dealing with his writing is immense. Until now, however, there has been no standard volume on the history of Melvillecriticism. That a volume on this subject is timely and important is shown by the number of introductions and companions to Melville's work that have been published during the last few years (none of which focuses on the criticalreception of Melville's works), as well as the steady stream of critical monographs and scholarly biographies that have been published on Melville since the 1920s. Melville's Mirrors provides Melville scholars and graduateand undergraduate students with an accessible guide to the story of Melville criticism as it has developed over the years. It is a valuable reference for research libraries and for the personal libraries of scholars of Melville and of nineteenth-century American literature in general, and it is also a potential textbook for major-author courses on Melville, which are offered at many universities. BRIAN YOTHERS is the Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso and associate editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. He is the author of Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass (Camden House, 2016).

Examines how a young nation responded to constantly expanding boundaries, as witnessed in its literature, public documents, schoolbooks, and art

Analyzing the stylistic innovations most characteristic in pivotal works of literary realism, Prosaic Times shows how their styles are not merely ornamental but fundamental to building their own temporalities. By capturing the temporal dimensions in Wordsworth's The Prelude, Richardson's Clarissa, Flaubert's “Un Coeur Simple,” and Melville's Moby Dick, John Park argues that these literary works of realism – the artistic claim to represent life as it is – do not necessarily depend upon the plotline of the story they tell. The reduced significance placed on plot is counterbalanced by something else: an experience of duration, a sheer extension of time in reading, a sense of time stemming from the unique stylistic innovations in each work. Contrasting with the view that realism represents social conditions, this book claims that while realist works represent society, they themselves are not bound to social conditions. Instead, literary realism accounts for ways of configuring history that render social conditions understandable. The active quality of language, of what narrative discourse says and does in forming our understanding of real things and events, is brought directly to the reader's attention in these works. Through close readings that analyze, among other things, the natural objects and scenes of experience; dense, temporal overlapping of accounts; the depiction of the quotidian ways of a village; and the boundless occasion for “timeless” metaphysical reflections, Park shows how narration not only “takes” time, but ultimately makes time part of the experience it represents to the reader.

The motifs of island and shipwreck have been present in literature and the arts from ancient times. Whether they occur as plot elements, as part of literary or film imagery, as symbols in paintings, as leitmotifs in songs, or as concepts in philosophical theories, both have always been a source of fascination to authors, artists and scholars. In Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts, Brigitte Le Juez and Olga Springer have gathered essays that explore shipwreck and island figures in texts as historically, culturally and artistically diverse as Walter Scott’s The Lord of the Isles, Cristina Fernández Cubas’ “The Lighthouse”, reality TV series Treasure Island, pop songs of the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs, or The Otolith Group’s essay-film Hydra Decapita.

Almost 200 years ago the Northeast endured a dramatic, devastating series of cold spells, destroying crops, forcing thousand to migrate west, and causing many to wonder if their assumptions about a world governed by a beneficial Providence were valid. The so-called "year without a summer" also exposed weaknesses in political and theological authorities, spurring a trend toward scientific inquiry and greater democracy. An endangered New England agriculture gave impetus to that region's manufacturing sector. The alarming threat to existence in that part of the country (as well as most of Western Europe) thus helped usher in the modern era. This book is written with the parallels between 1816 and our current "climate change" in mind: it introduces informed non-specialists to the myriad of social, psychological, political, demographic, and economic consequences which can be brought about by abrupt change. A major meteorological event profoundly affected our nation’s development in 1816. This book shows how this weather phenomenon acted as an accelerator of trends which were just emerging in the early 19th-century - toward greater democracy and the spread of information; settlement of the Western frontier; use of the scientific method to investigate and understand natural phenomena; questioning of long-held religious beliefs as a result of increased knowledge; and industrialization as the means to expand the scope and wealth of the United States. Like all my books, America’s First Climate Crisis is written in an accessible, engaging style, using anecdotes and thumbnail sketches to evoke the mood and important personalities of the day. While thoroughly researched, the book avoids the pitfall of academic writing by appealing to the curiosity of intelligent readers who may be put off by uninspired or technical language. The book is organized around various consequences of the disastrous harvests of 1816: after outlining the nature and scope of this calamity, I describe how it brought about a massive exodus to the Ohio Valley and shift in political and economic might to that region; how it undermined the once-unquestioned authority of New England’s Federalist establishment; how it gave greater credence to scientific explanations for weather events and disasters; how it compelled New England merchants to abandon their opposition to manufacturing; and how it helped create a modern awareness of humanity’s place in the universe.