MELVILLE'S NATURAL WORLD: A VOYAGE TO THE METAPHYSICAL.
Item
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Title
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MELVILLE'S NATURAL WORLD: A VOYAGE TO THE METAPHYSICAL.
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Identifier
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AAI8708271
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identifier
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8708271
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Creator
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ASKINS, JUSTIN.
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Contributor
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Irving Howe
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American
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Abstract
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Examining the land- and seascapes in Melville's first six novels is a provocative way to focus on the central Melvillean themes of ambiguity and isolation. The natural settings from Typee through Moby-Dick show Melville increasingly concerned with man's inability to penetrate into the depths of the natural world. This inability to fathom nature--and the God that might be behind the surface--is vividly presented in the growing ambiguity of the natural settings and then in the ultimate ambiguity of Moby Dick.;In Typee and Omoo, the natural world is an exotic one, based on Melville's own adventures in the South Seas. The first novel is full of tropical loveliness offset by lurking danger from the cannibalistic Typees. Omoo is a follow up, weakened by a formless plot and a superficial use of the natural setting.;Mardi is Melville's attempt at a "real romance," but it is a major botch. The cumbersome allegory creaks along, unrelieved by any lasting contact with the natural world. However, the main character, the obsessed Taji, is a preliminary to Ahab.;Redburn and White-Jacket return to the autobiographical, but both these intensely personal books are too reined in by fact to allow the natural world a decisive role in the novelistic action. The characters of Redburn and White Jacket are isolated, but within the social limits of the ships they sail on.;In Moby-Dick, through the great triangle of Ahab and Ishmael and Moby Dick, the natural world becomes an alluring antagonist of marvelous dimension. Ambiguity upon ambiguity pile up, and as Ishmael relates and reflects on the extraordinary battle before him, man's overwhelming isolation becomes a fierce reality. Moby-Dick finally shows man's incapacity to confirm either a relationship with or even the very existence of the Creator.;Overall, Melville's handling of the natural world allows him to move past autobiographical narrative into the realm of the mythical. Melville's writings finally come to represent the archetypal American experience of man in contact and conflict with nature.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
