A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville

Striking Through the Pasteboard Mask: A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English California State University, Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English Spring 2012 Copyright By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen 2012 Striking Through the Pasteboard Mask: A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen, B.A. This thesis has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee: Dr. Steven Frye This thesis is dedicated to Dr’s Charles MacQuarrie and Steven Frye. Without your constant reassurance and encouragement this thesis would never have seen the light of day. A special thanks to my husband, Chris Andersen, who gave me the confidence to continue when I wanted to quit. Thank you so much for being the light in the storm. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Travel Narratives – Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas 7 Chapter Two: The Philosophical Narratives – “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” 17 Chapter Three: The Psychological Narrative – Moby Dick; or, The Whale 27 Chapter Four: The Satirical Narrative – The Confidence Man: His Masquerade 37 Conclusion 49 Glossary of Literary Terms 51 Bibliography 53 Metzger-Andersen 1 Introduction Herman Melville is arguably the most influential American writer of the nineteenth-century, yet he was not taken seriously by the critics of his time. Since the early twentieth-century, however, Melville’s oeuvre has been considered an important part of the Western canon and modern critics have been writing about his works at length. Unlike his contemporary critics, those from the early twentieth-century forward appreciate Melville’s works and recognize their tremendous literary value. Even with the extensive studies on his collected works, the one thing that has failed to receive recognition from the critics is the pervasive role that stylistics played in Melville’s writing. To date, there have been a few articles and books that discuss the stylistics of specific works, and although John Bernstein endeavored to link specific themes to all Melville’s catalog in Pacifism and Rebellion in the Writings of Herman Melville, there has never been a cross-sectional analysis of his works grounded solely in stylistics. The development in Melville’s opus is interesting in that most authors tend to become typecast into one particular style, while Melville wrote in such a way as to avoid these self-imposed restrictions. As such, this thesis will reticulate Melville’s stylistic variations from Typee to The Confidence Man and demonstrate the various stylistic techniques he used. Melville’s works naturally break down into four stylistic categories: (1) Travel, (2) Philosophical, (3) Psychological, and (4) Satirical. The main works within the first category, Travel, are Typee, Omoo, and Redburn. These works are all semi- autobiographical travel narratives based on adventures set on the high seas. While not Metzger-Andersen 2 devoid of other elements, the focus of these tales is very much about the journeys of the characters. There is little time spent on character development; the narrative focuses instead on their actions and descriptions of their travels. The stylistics of these novels is very straightforward and characterized by simple descriptive syntactic devices. Unlike the works within the Adventure category, those within the Philosophical involve more discussion among and about the characters. Mardi, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and White-Jacket epitomize Melville’s Philosophical genre. In these works, Melville begins experimenting with stylistic devices that convey a more express purpose than simple narration. These works, with their complexity and stylistic variances, are precursors to the psychological masterpiece, Moby-Dick. The final two categories are Psychological and Satirical. While there are many works that can be described as psychological, especially many of Melville’s short works, this thesis will focus on Moby-Dick. The category of Melville’s satirical works, on the other hand, is a set that contains only one. Although elements of satire are found in numerous works of Melville, there is only one work that he specifically characterized as a satire, The Confidence Man. Moby-Dick is emulative of a deep psychological questioning of the nature of God, among other things, while The Confidence Man attempts to hold a mirror up to the hypocrisies of the world Melville lives in. Stylistically, these works showcase Melville’s growing complexity from the simple to multifarious narration. The purpose and intent of this thesis, then, is to discuss the stylistic variances throughout Melville’s works. These works have stylistic devices that are common among all of his works, such as hypotaxis, parataxis, attribution, and erotesis. These staple Metzger-Andersen 3 devices allow Melville to write complex subordinate clauses that invoke various concepts or emphasize particular ideas. Although important to Melville’s stylistic repertoire it is the different stylistic choices he makes that is most intriguing. There are manifold explanations for the changes to his stylistics, but the primary concern here is not in the why, but rather in the how. These skills, often overlooked by critics, are a previously un-rubricated notion with regard to Melville and his works. Earlier critics of his works were preoccupied with different themes and concerns, but serious consideration of his works did not begin until the early 1920’s. It was at this time that the works of Melville experienced what is fondly called “The Melville Revival.” (Delbanco) Critics began to reappraise the literary merits of Moby-Dick and Melville’s granddaughter released his previously unpublished Billy Budd posthumously. The passion for Moby-Dick, coupled with the release of Billy Budd, sparked the critics of the early twentieth-century to reconsider the entire cannon of Melville’s works. Many of the critics focused on the intense religious and philosophical nature of Melville’s works. E.M. Forster noted that the Billy Budd “‘reach[ed] straight back into the universal, to a blackness and sadness so transcending our own that they are undistinguishable from glory’” and that it’s “ethereal combination of sorrow and serenity” was on par with the tone of Moby-Dick (Delbanco 290). The notions of the nature of evil and the existence of God were also major concerns that eventually became synonymous with Moby-Dick criticism during that time. Aside from the philosophical and religious overtones explored by the critics of the early twentieth-century, Moby-Dick and many of Melville’s short works were being re- categorized as a proto-modernist work by some critics. Some of the stylistics techniques Metzger-Andersen 4 that Melville used, such as kaleidoscoping and blending of genre and tone, became more apparent to the critics of the early twentieth-century and they sought out more works that reflected the Modernist movement. Since Modernism was rebelling against the principals of the Realist movement and sought to rebel against the notion of the “all-knowing, loving, compassionate God” of the nineteenth-century, many of Melville’s works, especially Moby-Dick, were celebrated as Modernist (Pericles 38-39). The critics of the latter part of twentieth-century were concerned with gender and sexuality issues associated with both Melville’s works and his personal life. Much speculation has been made about the nature of the relationship between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville, but considering Melville was notorious for destroying correspondence, there is little left of their exchanges to prove with certainty that this is true. What is left that bears any significance to the subject is Melville’s body of work, which he characteristically wrote with “sociohistorigraphical meaning” (Creech 10). As such, many critics have noted the lack of a feminine presence in the majority of his works. This is fuel for the fire that Melville may have had a propensity towards male companionship. Even though women do occasionally make appearances in Melville’s works, they are almost always the object of sexual desire as in Pierre and Mardi, which works in opposition with the theory of homosexuality (Creech 70). Yet, in Moby-Dick, with themes such as male bonding and homoerotism, the issue of sexuality becomes a rebarbative subject of discussion. Other critics, however, see Melville’s narratives as indicative of his issues with intimacy or even impotency. Ishmael and Ahab are alike in that it is the comfort of the sea they turn to in times of strife. They turn away from human companionship, even though it appears they form Metzger-Andersen 5 attachments to Queequeg and Starbuck respectively, but they are superficial connections. Similarly, critics argue that in Melville’s short story, The Paradise of Bachelors and Tartarus of Maids, “the bachelors in their paradise . are blind to what is real and painful in the world . [and the] tartarus of maids is a frightening, lonely, hellish place . and nothing can be created” from either world as fertility is removed in both worlds (Rosenberg 71). As of late, the fixation of literary critics in regards to Melville’s works is post- colonialism and, more importantly, Melville’s own inquiry into colonialism. The works most commonly associated with this theme are the South Sea tales. Often times referred to as his “sociological travel narratives,” the South Sea tales are read with other texts describing far away lands as “a continuous narrative that needs to be read through the discourse of empire-making.” (Schueller 8-9). Critics view these tales as a glimpse into Western Imperialism and colonization. Some critics tend to praise Melville’s South Sea tales, especially Typee, for exposing the world of the 1840’s to “the hypocrisies of the Christian missions and the arrogance of the colonizing impulse” (Martin 69).

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