Monstrous Compounds: Genre and Value in Herman Melville
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MONSTROUS COMPOUNDS: GENRE AND VALUE IN HERMAN MELVILLE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jason L. Corner, M. A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Elizabeth Renker, Adviser Professor Steven Fink ______________________________ Professor Jared Gardner Adviser English Graduate Program ABSTRACT My title comes from a review of Herman Melville’s 1848 book Mardi, a review that described the book as a “monstrous compound.” In a sense, my dissertation is primarily dedicated to unpacking this comment. Melville’s major works – Mardi, Moby- Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence-Man – are indeed monstrous compounds. They are “compounds” because they are written in a mixed-genre form, combining different fictional genres in one text. And they are “monstrous” because they encode Melville’s philosophy of tragic nihilism, his belief in the absolute falsity of all moral beliefs, and in the tragic unavoidability of such false beliefs. My dissertation demonstrates the way in which Melville’s mixed-genre texts relate form to content, and shows Melville’s complex and ambivalent relationship both to the popular fiction of the antebellum period and to his own audience. The root of all was Melville’s philosophical position, which I herein term tragic nihilism: a belief that the universe offers no ground of moral meaning, combined with a belief that humans were prisoners of their own subjective moral beliefs, regardless of how weakly those beliefs were founded. At the same time, Melville was not merely a writer who thought deeply about philosophical issues; he was also a writer in the sphere of popular nineteenth-century fiction. Fiction circulated widely in Melville’s day; it was ii generally agreed by commentators that everyone was reading novels. This popular fiction, in the antebellum environment, was influenced by certain moral requirements, and there were certain patterns that required certain morally meaningful conventions in the texts – poetic justice, reliable moral commentary, and so forth – forming a moral structure. Melville was broadly familiar with this popular literature, and used its conventions in all of his works, from the bestseller Typee to the scorned Moby-Dick and Pierre. However, as Melville grew, he was stymied by the moral structure of the conventions of antebellum popular fiction, because it was contradicted by his own tragic nihilism. Melville’s relationship with his readers, as a result of this, was a complex and ambiguous one, combining the desire to communicate with the desire to punish. Melville’s ambivalent relationship with his readers manifested itself, in the sequence of mature works begun with Moby-Dick, through the use of a mixed-genre form. His mixed-genre works combined distinct popular fictional genres in a way that emphasized moral conflicts between them. This formal strategy allowed Melville to work out a relationship to antebellum popular fiction that was creative and original. The moral conflicts he created in his mixed-genre texts gave expression to his philosophical position, allowing each moral position represented by each genre to critique the other and show its falsity, and by extension demonstrate the larger falsity of all positive moral beliefs and positions. This allowed him to work out his relationship to his readers, to communicate by using the mixed-genre form to illustrate his position, while also attacking the readers by challenging their expectations and their comprehension. The first chapter, “’A Romance, A Tragedy, and a Natural History’: Genre and Value in Moby-Dick,” freshly places Moby-Dick in the context of different kinds of iii adventure stories circulating in the antebellum period. Ishmael’s part of the narrative is best described as a frontiersman adventure, derived from the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper; Ahab’s part of the narrative is positioned as an illustrious criminal adventure, making Ahab a recognizable antihero. I concern myself in this chapter with the hero problem – the question of whether the text’s values center on Ahab or Ishmael. If we understand that Melville plays the characters against each other by placing the two genres in conflict, then we can solve this problem, seeing that Melville demonstrates the falsity of all claims to value. The second chapter, “The Punishment of Virtue: Genre and Value in Pierre,” looks at the text as a combination of genres along systematic lines. The first half of the text relies on the resources of domestic fiction, facing Pierre with a moral decision and anticipating the rewards of virtue. The second half of the text relies on the resources of city-mysteries fiction, representing the punishment of vice. By a parabolic form that combines the two genres, the text systematically reverses key moral formulae of antebellum fiction, representing a punishment of virtue. The third chapter, “For His Final Trick: Genre and Value in The Confidence- Man,” considers the combination of Southwestern humor and metaphysical fiction in Melville’s last work of fiction to be published in his lifetime. I argue that Melville’s combination of genre is both formally and philosophically more profound than in any other work, and the text formally demonstrates that moral beliefs are not merely false, but incoherent as well. The text combines genres to present characters whose identities slip back and forth repeatedly, and actions that can be interpreted in radically incompatible iv ways. Melville thus dramatizes the difficulty of reading in a world where humans are constantly subject to their own illusions. My fourth chapter, “’But Lever There Is None’: Genre and Value in Mardi,” looks backward to a text written before any of the ones dealt with previously. In this chapter I deal with the question of Mardi’s aesthetic failure, arguing that it is an unsuccessful attempt to do what Melville would go on to do successfully in Moby-Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence-Man, and only by understanding it thus can one adequately understand the nature of Melville’s failed achievement. This dissertation makes a number of genuinely original contributions both to the study of Melville’s work and to the study of nineteenth-century American literature generally. Although critics have explored Melville’s interest in philosophy since the beginning of the academic study in Melville, and a new generation of critics has been interested in the popular literature of the nineteenth century, both in and of itself and in relation to the work of the canonical writers, no one has put these two areas of concern together. Interest in antebellum popular fiction is on the wax, and this dissertation contributes to that discussion by paying careful attention to that fiction’s moral structure, and how that moral structure manifests itself differently in different genres. The picture it paints of Herman Melville manages to resolve many contradictions, including those between Melville the high-minded philosopher and Melville the bestselling writer, and between the Melville who desperately seeks readers and the Melville who seems concerned with baffling and frustrating his readers. v For Martha-Lynn vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Dr. Elizabeth Renker, who helped me develop this project from its earliest stage and constantly offered me thoughtful criticism, while giving tirelessly of her time and energy. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Steven Fink and Dr. Jared Gardner, who were consistently helpful and supportive, as well as all others in the academic community who have helped, including Dr. Elizabeth Hewitt and Dr. Caroline Bicks. I am very grateful to my wife, Martha-Lynn, for her patience and energy, as well as our familes: Douglas and Rebecca Corner, Amy and Geoff Erwin, Mark Corner, Robert and Carolyn Harrison, Chad, Laynie, and Joe Harrison, and Martin Leigh Harrison. vii VITA March 4, 1973 Born – Columbus – Ohio 1995 B. A. English, James Madison University 1997 M. A. English, James Madison University 1996-1998 Instructor, English, James Madison University 1998-1999 Foreign Expert, HuaiHai Institute of Technology, Xinpu, China 1999-2004 Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University 2004-Present Visiting Lecturer, The Ohio State University at Newark FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………...…ii Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………….vi Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………...…vii Vita ………………………………………………………………………………..……viii Chapters: 1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….1 2. “A Romance, a Tragedy, and a Natural History”: Genre, Value, and Reader in Moby-Dick ………………………………………………………………………46 3. The Punishment of Virtue: Genre, Value, and Reader in Pierre ……………….85 4. For His Final Trick: Genre and Value in Melville’s The Confidence-Man …...113 5. “Without a Lever”: Mardi and Genre ………………………………………….152 6. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..194 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...199 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I. THE ISOLATO AND THE COSMOPOLITAN Once on board the Pequod, Ishmael describes the men of the crew as “Isolatoes . not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own” [italics Melville’s] (121). The first academic critics to deal with Herman Melville painted the picture of just such an isolato: Melville as a writer who lived on a separate