MELVILLE'S TURN TO POETRY: A GENRE APPROACH TO "CLAREL".
Item
-
Title
-
MELVILLE'S TURN TO POETRY: A GENRE APPROACH TO "CLAREL".
-
Identifier
-
AAI8203318
-
identifier
-
8203318
-
Creator
-
ROSENBERG, WARREN.
-
Date
-
1981
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, American
-
Abstract
-
This study seeks to prove that Melville's abandonment of prose and turn to poetry after 1857 is a significant personal, aesthetic, and ideological statement in itself and a logical development from his earlier writing career. Melville's prose works, letters, marginalia, and poems themselves provide evidence for explaining why he so singularly changed modes. These materials are used as conduits to the most compelling piece of evidence, the six hundred page poem Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876), to which Melville devoted almost a decade of effort. So different in form and subject from Moby Dick (1851), his prose masterpiece, Clarel is the embodiment of Melville's mature artistic vision. To study it closely, therefore, is a prerequisite for understanding the evolution of his thought as well as the significance of the poetry both as a mode of inquiry and as a vitally important symbol.;The approach through genre is suited to the aims of this study in a number of ways. First, if poetry is considered as a particular type of utterance, distinguishable in purpose and effect from prose, one can make certain hypotheses about why Melville turned to it. Second, a genre approach places Melville's choice in an historical context. From this perspective, the struggle between poetry and prose in his work and in the work of nineteenth-century writers in general is seen to be related to the central religious debate of the period between belief (poetry) and scepticism (science). Finally, the metrical difficulties and overwhelming expanse of Clarel have led most critics away from its surface in search of its deeper thematic continuities with Melville's prose. In approaching Clarel as a poem, however, in emphasizing its formal differences from the prose, thematic development is revealed.;The study begins by following the chronology of Melville's career, with Clarel as the focus of the final three chapters. Chapter one, "'The Endless Contest': Poetry Versus Prose in Melville's Fiction" centers the turn to poetry on Melville's rebellion against the demands of the novel. The short stories are discussed and the chapter ends with The Confidence Man (1857), the last prose work Melville published in his lifetime. Chapter two, "Quitting the Quarry: Melville Turns to Poetry," uses marginalia, lectures, and the poetry written before Clarel to analyze his reasons, conscious and unconscious, for changing forms. In chapter three, "Poetry and Belief: Clarel as a Response to the Higher Critics," Melville's turn to poetry is placed within the contexts of literary history and the history of ideas. Clarel is shown, in its treatment of character and in the relation of character to myth, as a battleground for the poetry versus science struggle. Chapter four, "'Frames of Thought and Feeling': Clarel's Poetic Structure" applies the methods of modern genre theory to Clarel, specifically Paul Hernadi's "polycentric classification" system, to more precisely describe Melville's poetic strategy within the poem. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the poem as epic or anti-epic. The final chapter, "'To Terminus Build Fanes': Clarel, Poetry, and the Organic," attempts to synthesize the psychological, aesthetic, and religious motives behind Melville's turn to poetry into one essential motive, his need to come to terms with the organic as metaphor and as reality. Melville's treatment of sexuality in his works is used to illustrate the fact that only through poetry was he able to resolve the struggle between nature and art.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
English
