Melville's monumental imagination.
Item
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Title
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Melville's monumental imagination.
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Identifier
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AAI3127897
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identifier
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3127897
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Creator
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Maloney, Ian S.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Neal L. Tolchin
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Date
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2004
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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 | American Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation argues that Herman Melville used monumental ekphrasis throughout his novels in an attempt to show the irony, instability, and limitations of narrative form. Melville's novels move the reader through three levels of ekphrastic experience: indifference, fear, and hope. Monumental references in Melville's created worlds show his desire to move his literary art beyond the formulaic and unified and into the infinite and chaotic. Melville's imaginative casting of monuments and memorials displays both the artist's playful and serious considerations of the ongoing national monumental project in nineteenth century America. The fictional use of monuments and memorials reveals the author's skepticism about not only the national monument project but also the ability to create freely as a literary artist. For Melville, the attempt to capture and defy the process of time in monumental crafting only heightened his awareness of death, decay, and destruction. Melville penned prose monuments in his novels because those types of art works have largely been recognized as lasting, physical reminders of the past. Melville wanted his words to last as monuments for readers to question and reexamine. Instead of having passive receptors of words, Melville was calling for readers to challenge texts that were written or sculpted by artists. In essence, the words on the page, he hoped, would far outlast the physical limits of stones crafted for public memory consumption. This dissertation examines the shifts in Melville's ekphrastic work through a selected sampling of Melville's novels. It begins with the early travel narrative, Typee, as a sign of ekphrastic indifference. The dissertation then proceeds through the hopeful fantasy wanderings of Mardi and juxtaposes it with the harsh fear of realism in Redburn. The pinnacle of Melville's monumental ekphrasis is argued to be Moby-Dick, which revels in the fluid forms of Ishmael in stark contrast to the cracked sculpted form of Ahab. The final chapter signals a retreat into decay and forgetfulness in stone and print, as Melville subverts monumental visions through domestic novels, city mysteries and patriotic biography in Pierre and Israel Potter, respectively.
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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.
