Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-9-2016 “THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS Damien Brian Schlarb Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Schlarb, Damien Brian, "“THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/161 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS by DAMIEN BRIAN KARL-HEINZ SCHLARB Under the Direction of Professor Reiner Smolinski (Ph.D.) ABSTRACT This study examines how Herman Melville’s oeuvre interacts with Old Testament (OT) wisdom literature (the Books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes). Using recent historical findings on the rise of religious skepticism and the erosion of Biblical authority in both Europe and the United States, I read Melville as an author steeped in the theological controversies of the eighteenth-century. Specifically, I am interested in teasing out the surprising disavowals of overt religious skepticism in Melville’s writing. By tracing the so-called Solomonic wisdom tradition throughout Melville’s oeuvre, I argue that Melville had developed an epistemology of contemplation towards that body of Biblical texts. Scholarship has traditionally painted Melville as a subversive if not downright skeptical religious thinker. Most studies have produced authorial readings, using texts as forensic evidence to make assertions about the author’s psychology. Incidentally, such assessments have confirmed the narrative of Herman Melville as a grand failed author of the nineteenth century, while ignoring the ambivalent attitudes toward Biblical authority, textual history, and skepticism that emerge in Melville’s writing. The present study intervenes by re-addressing several procedural questions about Melville’s literary dealings with the Bible: How does Melville deal with the distinct topics of religion, theology, religious skepticism, and doubt? How does he think through the relationship between science and religion as well as that of personal religion and theology? I claim that Melville’s work can be read as a continuous contemplation of Biblical wisdom. His writing, I argue, deals productively rather than a destructive with the Bible, its textual history, and authority. Melville’s thinking on theological and religious subjects was not merely subversive but constructive. In mounting this argument, I contradict current scholarship that reads Melville as trying to invent a new American Bible. In contrast, I show how Melville’s philosophical forays, even when critical, are dependent on the ethics, language, and thinking of the OT. INDEX WORDS: Herman Melville, Religion, Theology, Bible, Wisdom Literature, Solomonic Wisdom, Moby-Dick, The Confidence-Man, Redburn, The Encantadas, Billy Budd, Orme, Bartleby, Epistemology “THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS by DAMIEN BRIAN KARL-HEINZ SCHLARB A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2016 Copyright by Damien Brian Karl-Heinz Schlarb 2016 “THE PONDERING REPOSE OF IF”: HERMAN MELVILLE’S LITERARY EXEGESIS by DAMIEN BRIAN KARL-HEINZ SCHLARB Committee Chair: Reiner Smolinski Committee: Mark Noble Paul Schmidt Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2016 iv DEDICATION For Svenja v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisors, Reiner Smolinski and Oliver Scheiding, for their guidance and feedback over the years. This dissertation would not have been possible without their help. I also thank my committee, Mark Noble and Paul Schmidt, for their instruction and advice, not just on this document but through countless papers, assignments, and conversations that helped me conceptualize this project and ultimately learn the academic trade. I am also immensely grateful to Pearl McHaney and Chris Kocela, who have been invaluable in helping me navigate the administrative clefts one faces as an international student. In the same vein, I thank the faculty and staff of the Georgia State University English department with whom I had the pleasure of working from 2005-11. The research and writing of this project was planned and realized at Georgia State University and Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz with the express intention of furthering cooperation between both institutions. I thank both institutions for giving me the opportunity to study and live in the U.S. and pursue a career in academia. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my family and friends who have been patient and generous beyond measure and who always helped me stay the course. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................... xi 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Methodology ...................................................................................................... 10 1.2 Literature Review .............................................................................................. 15 1.2.1 Theology and Literature ............................................................................... 16 1.2.2 Classic Melville Studies ................................................................................ 19 1.2.3 Contemporary Studies ................................................................................... 24 1.3 Oversights in Existing Scholarship .................................................................. 28 1.4 Structure and Rationale.................................................................................... 34 2 AMERICAN THEOLOGY & MELVILLE’S AUTHORIAL JOURNEY ......... 43 2.1 Historical Context and Religious Thinking .................................................... 43 2.2 The Spirit of the Age: A Topography of Nineteenth-Century Religious Sentiments 48 2.3 Action and Reaction: The Impact of Challenges to Biblical Authority on Exegetical Practice in Early America .................................................................................... 55 2.4 Deism and Free Thinking ................................................................................. 62 2.5 The American Seminary ................................................................................... 71 2.6 Pressing Issues in Nineteenth-Century Biblical Scholarship ........................ 78 vii 2.7 The Legacy of Sola Scriptura: Religious Reading and Publishing ............... 82 2.8 A New Medium for a New Message: The Religious Press and the Proliferation of Print Media ................................................................................................... 86 2.9 Oral Forms: Sermon Culture and Public Debates ......................................... 92 2.10 Protestant Zionism: American Interest in the Holy Land ......................... 98 2.11 Literary Romanticism and Biblical Hermeneutics ................................... 106 2.12 Scientific Innovation and Revolution ......................................................... 109 2.13 Conclusion: Melville’s Interest in Biblical Hermeneutics........................ 115 3 Divine Justice and Sublime Suffering: Moby-Dick, Bartleby, Clarel, and the Book of Job ................................................................................................................................ 121 3.1 Textual History of the Book of Job ................................................................ 124 3.2 Melville Reading ‘Job’ and the American Past ............................................ 138 3.3 Mardi and Job: Taji as Sub-Sub Librarian .................................................. 140 3.4 Moby-Dick: The Whale’s Three Jobs ............................................................ 145 3.4.1 Job on Trial: Melville’s Complaint against God’s Inconsistency ............. 149 3.4.2 Ishmael as Repentant Job ........................................................................... 157 3.4.3 Not a Rebel After All: Ahab as Defiant Job ............................................... 161 3.4.4 Pip as Victimized Job .................................................................................. 165 3.4.5 Moby-Dick: Melville’s Mature Exegetical Method ................................... 169 viii 3.5 To Sleep with Kings and Counselors: Herman Melville’s Use of the Book of Job in ‘Bartleby’ .................................................................................................................... 171 3.5.1 The Lawyer’s Plight of Representation and Bartleby’s Suffering ............ 172 3.5.2 Bartleby as Job: Melville First Critique of American Urban Christian Charity 179 3.5.3 ‘Curse God and Die’: Unwanted Physical Remains ................................. 183 3.5.4 Christ and Not: Bartleby’s