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American Literature I, Lecture Twenty-Six

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American Literature I, Lecture Twenty-Six American Literature I Professor Cyrus R. K. Patell Lecture Twenty-Six: Melville (V) New York University Concepts, Terms, and Names cosmopolitanism / deliberative democracy Raymond Williams model of culture: dominant, residual, and emergent Puritanism vs. Jeffersonianism / “Yankee” vs. “Cavalier” self-conscious reading horizon of expectations The Melville Revival Film adaptations: The Sea Beast (1926), Moby Dick (1930) Fedallah / Parsee Zoroastrianism / Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) Quotes John William DeForest, “The Great American Novel,”The Nation (9 January 1868 ) “the Great American Novel—the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence . .” “HaWthorne, the greatest of American imaginations, staggered under the load of the American novel. In "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Blithedale Romance" We have three delightful romances, full of acute spiritual analysis, of the light of other worlds, but also characterized by only a vague consciousness of this life, and by graspings that catch little but the subjective of humanity. Such personages that HaWthorne creates belong to the Wide realm of art rather than to our nationality.” “The nearest approach to the desired phenomenon is Uncle Tom's Cabin." There Were very noticeable faults in that story; there Was a very faulty plot; there Was (if idealism be a fault) a black man painted Whiter than the angels, and a girl such as girls are to be, perhaps, but are not yet; there was a little village twaddle. But there was also a national breadth to the picture, truthful outlining of character, natural speaking, and plenty of strong feeling. Though comeliness of form Was lacking, the material of the Work Was in many respects admirable. Paul Lauter, “Melville Climbs the Canon” “Melville” was constructed during in the 1920s as part of an ideological conflict which linked advocates of modernism and of traditional high cultural values—often connected to the academy—against a social and cultural “other,” generally, if ambiguously, portrayed as feminine, genteel, exotic, dark, foreign, and numerous. In this contest a distinctively masculine, Anglo-Saxon image of Melville Was deployed as a lone and Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 26 2 poWerful artistic beacon against the dangers presented by the masses; creating such an image entailed overlooking issues of race, eroticism, democracy, and the like, Which have become commonplaces of contemporary criticism. Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989) Does [Wittman] announce noW that the author is—Chinese? Or, rather, Chinese- American? And be forced into autobiographical confession. Stop the music-I have to butt in and introduce myself and my race. “Dear reader, all these characters Whom you’ve been identifying With—Bill, Brooke, and Annie—are Chinese and I am too.” The fiction is spoiled. You Who read have been suckered along, identifying like hell, only to find out that you’d been getting a peculiar, colored, slanted p.o.v. “Call me Ishmael.” See? You pictured a White guy, didn’t you? If Ishmael Were described—ochery ecru amber umber skin—you picture a tan White guy. Wittman Wanted to spoil all those stories coming out of and set in NeW England Back East-to blacken and to yellow Bill, Brooke, and Annie. A neW rule for the imagination: The common man has Chinese looks. Points to Remember • Thomas Bender on NeW York’s cosmopolitanism: does Moby-Dick begin in NeW York rather than in NeW Bedford to make an association to NeW York’s historical cosmopolitanism? • Think about the cannibal motif in the novel. What does it mean that Ishmael compares the Whaler to a cannibal, p. 222: “Your true Whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, oWning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.” On p. 242, in the chapter “The Whale as a Dish,” Ishmael asks, “Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal?” • Melville writes Moby-Dick in deliberate opposition to the domestic and sentimental types of novel that Were popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Note that Hollywood’s first adaptation reinserts the story back into that tradition. • What kind of “Melville” does the “Melville Revival” of the 1920s create? What kind of “Melville” does a novelist like Maxine Hong Kingston experience? • What is the significance of Melville’s use of the image of “the margin” in the Epilogue? • Ahab’s scar (Ch. 28, “Ahab,” p. 108–09.): What Web of associated ideas and images does Ishmael’s description of Ahab’s scar evoke through the terms “branded,” “lightning,” “the stake,” and “crucifixion.” • How do the novel’s Zoroastrian motifs serve as a Way of questioning Christian belief in progress and Providence? • Zoroastrianism and dualism in Moby-Dick: see Chapter 74, “The Sperm Whale’s Head – Contrasted View,” p. 262. • HoW does Melville use Zoroastrianism to promote cosmopolitanism? In What Ways does Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion, become an emergent tradition in the novel, used to decenter the dominant culture of Christianity? • The imagery of Queequeg’s coffin: “Queequeg in His Coffin”: Queequeg spent “many spare hours . in carving the lid With all manner of grotesque figures and draWings; Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 26 3 and it seemed that hereby he Was striving, in his rude Way, to copy parts of the tWisted tattooing on his body” (p. 366). In What Ways is this an image of Moby-Dick the novel? HoW is Ahab’s response to these tattoos characteristic of his subjectivity? • Look at Ahab’s and Starbuck’s conversations in “The Symphony” and “The Chase— Second Day.” What role does domesticity play here? • HoW Would you characterize Ahab’s final fatalism? Compare Ahab’s description of striking the sun in “The Quarter-Deck” to these lines in “The Symphony”: “Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or Who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible poWer; hoW then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” Is this the final failure of cosmopolitan conversation for Ahab? • In what ways is the description of the coffin as “a Wondrous Work in one volume” at the end of the chapter “Queequeg in His Coffin” also a description of Moby-Dick and American romance narrative more generally? For Further Thought • “The Doubloon”: Note the sequence of perspectives: in what ways does each interpreter of the doubloon find What he expects to find? What does this tell us about interpretation and about our ability to discern truth? Why does Ishmael set this chapter up as if it were a play-within-a-play? Compare this chapter to earlier sequences, such as the “Knights and Squires” chapters and the sequence of chapters after “The Quarter-Deck.” • In what ways is the novel characterized by an alternation between the epic / tragic / portentous chapters devoted to Ahab and the comic / encyclopedic / digressive chapters characteristic of Ishmael? When does the alternation cease and Why? See, for example, “The Forge, p. 370”; “The Candles, p. 379”; “The Needle,” p. 388. • Does Moby Dick act with intent in the three chapters devoted to the chase? • The epigraph to the epilogue comes from Job: the Words that the messengers speak reporting back to Job of the disasters that have befallen him. If Ishmael is the messenger, Who is Job? • [Writing in the journal Law and Literature, my colleague] Denis Donoghue wondered, writing in the journal Law and Literature, as the United States saw itself at war against an “axis of evil,” if it were possible to read Moby-Dick as anything but an allegory of revenge. HoW have the readings of the novel We’ve done this term suggested Ways in Which the novel dramatizes the possibility of breaking out of cycles of revenge? What obstacles lie in the way of the realization of that possibility? • Think about the process by Which Moby-Dick was canonized. In what ways is Moby- Dick a modernist novel before modernism? HoW did the horizon of expectations for a literary novel change after the time that Melville published the novel? • How does Moby-Dick’s status as a “classic” novel affect the ways in which it is read? In what ways is Moby-Dick oppressive to later novelists (like Maxine Hong Kingston)? How can we recover the subversive aspects of Moby-Dick? • Does Moby-Dick “matter”? If so, hoW? If not, Why not? Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 26 4 Today’s Video Excerpt from Moby Dick (1930), starring John Barrymore, Sr. Today's Songs Man Man, “Harpoon Fever (Queequeg’s Playhouse)” MC Lars, “Ahab” (see the YouTube video on patell.org) The Doors, “The End” Semisonic, “Closing Time” .
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