THE iffiLVILLE REVIVAL A Study of Twentieth Century Criticism Through its Treatment of 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 BERNARD MICHAEL WOLPERT, B.S. in Ed., M.A. The Ohio State University 1951 Approved by; Adviser CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Backgrounds of Twentieth Century Criticism .......... 1 II. British Origins of the Melville R e v i v a l ............ 22 III. Melville and the Methods of Literary History......... 41 IV. Melville and Sociological Criticism.......... 69 V. Melville and Psychological Criticism.......... 114- VI, Melville and Philosophical Criticism ............. 160 VII. Melville and the New Criticism . ................ IS? VIII. Melville and the Development of Pluralistic Criticism 24-0 CHAPTER I Backgrounds of Twentieth Century Criticism At the time of Melville's death in I89I, the condition of literary criticism in America was amorphous. So dominant had become the demands of a journalism that catered to a flourishing middle-class public de­ termined to achieve an easy method to "culture," that the literary critic of this period, the eighties and nineties, devised an artificial tradition by which he could protect himself against the democratic so­ ciety with which he was acutely dissatisfied. This tradition was, therefore, conservative in nature. Its values, based on customary taste and training, were selected primarily as a refuge against both the con­ temporary American society and the contemporary literature,^ It was presumably devoted to literature - to English and classical literature almost exclusively. In American literature it considered only those established names of the past - Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 2 Lowell - which persisted through "the inertia of reputation," The method of this criticism was that of biography and history, and its dis­ tinguishing feature "was that it was not evaluative criticism but affec- tation pure and simple."^ The few books on American literature which had been published up 1. Leonard Lutwack, The Dynamics of Conservative Criticism, un­ published doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1950, pp. 302- 303. 2. John Macy, The Spirit of American Literature (Modern Library ed., New York, 1913), pp. vii, 12, 13, vi. 3. Lutwack, OP, cit,. p. 11. 2 to this period attest to the method; they were almost entirely of a historical and biographical nature,^ The criticism itself is evidence of the atrophying effects of the tradition; it was "anemic with gen­ tility; it hardly rose above the level of gossip about books. American literature continued to receive this treatment well into the twentieth century. The gradual development of realism in literature, the political, economic, and social effects of World War I which renewed the sense of a vigorous American nationalism, the new discoveries in such extra-literary areas of knowledge as sociology, psychology, anthro­ pology, and aesthetics - all of these forces combined to change the status of American literature and to encourage great activity in Ameri­ can literary criticism. With the twentieth century, it seemed as though "the modern consciousness had at last become conscious of itself in literature, and this consciousness demanded that literary work be assimilated in relation to a great many different and complicated inter­ ests."^ In the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, the origins of twentieth century criticism are discernible. There existed, at this time, two general attitudes toward American literature; the academic and the non-academic. In the public schools and the universities - A. Howard Mumford Jones, The Theory of American Literature (Ithaca, N. Y,, 19AB), Chapter V of this work gives an excellent resume of the works on American literature produced in this period. The book also contains a selected list of works on the history and philosophy of American literature. 5. Fred B, Millett, Gontemnorary American Authors (New York, 1944), p. 181. 6. William Barrett, "A Present Tendency in American Criticism," Kenyon Review (Winter, 1949). 3 especially the latter - the conservative tradition had become so en­ trenched that the struggle for the recognition of American literature as an expression of a national spirit, a struggle which had been con­ tinuing since the early days of the nation, had all but expired.? In­ stitutions of learning and the professorial powers of such institutions had declined almost completely to recognize the national development of American literature; instead, they "insisted upon measuring American writers by British standards," claiming that "American literature was a branch of English letters, a subordinate, if locally interesting ex­ pression of the Anglo-Saxon spirit.The study of American literature was "a mere footnote to English departments; and it was sometimes even neglected in high schools."9 The academic method of the study of literature at this time was derived principally from the techniques of German historical research. This method tried to impose upon the study of literature that scientific treatment, with its thoroughness, its objectivity, its rigorous exacti­ tude in factual data, which American historians, profoundly influenced by the German method, had tried to impose on the study of history. It is little wonder, therefore, that the first volumes of American 7. For articles touching on this subject; Benjamin T. Spencer, "A National Literature: 1835-1855," American Literature. VII, (May, 1936) 125-159i "A National Literature; Post-Civil War Decade," MLQ (March, 1943) 71-86; "An American Literature Again," Sewanee Review. LVII (Winter, 1949). 8. Jones, op. cit.. p. 79. 9. Ibid.. p. 97. 10. For a discussion and brief bibliography on the subject of German scholarship in America, Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought. New York, 1943, pp. 581-585. u "criticism*' were, in reality historical studies of American literature, and it is less wonder that the figures who received the most attention were those whose reputations had been firmly established. On the other hand, outside the academy, a struggle of broad and deep proportions was beginning. It is primarily in this struggle that twentieth century criticism has its roots, for it was not a struggle restricted to literature and criticism; it was a struggle that gradual­ ly developed into a war against the conservative tradition, "On the one side, the defenders of various antiquated faiths, by no means in agreement with each other; on the other hand, the exponents of modern tendencies, their mutual antagonisms unresolved even in their conflicts with the traditionalists,*'^^ It soon became obvious that these criti­ cal wars were not just aesthetic debates; they involved social, politi­ cal, moral, and religious philosophies; they were conflicts between ways of life, between classes and between attitudes toward American culture. Although it remained singularly aloof from this struggle, the uni­ versity, nevertheless, was more closely allied with the adherents of tradition. The men who produced the "discreet though really unprinci- 12 pled impressionism that passed for criticism" at this time were either the historical scholar, the amateur scholar, or the dilletante, who, if not directly affiliated with the academy, were close kin. In addition, these men held power in the organs of literary criticism - The Atlantic Monthly. Scribner's. Harper * s. The North American Review. The Century - 11, Bernard Smith, Forces in American Criticism (New York, 1939), p, 302. 12, Millett, OP, cit,. p, 181, 5 the magazines which were responsible for official criticism, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. C. Stedman, Grant White, Richard Watson Gilder, William Winter - all were exponents of the conservatism, the gentility, the moral didacticism which were the criteria by which most literary works of the time were judged, and their opinion was usually instrumental in establishing the success or failure of a literary work. The periodicals to which they contributed were the leading journals of literary criticism in America, "True, in the eighties and nineties there were periodicals like the Literary- World . The Dial, and The Critic which catered to a restricted book- buying public, but the criticism in these less popular magazines is hardly to be differentiated from that in the popular monthlies,Not primarily critics, however, many of these men were also essayists, poets, moralists, and their endeavors in other genres were marked with the same characteristics which saturated their critical perceptions. On the other hand, this period saw the incipient rebellion against the conservative gentility which these men epitomized. Other creators of literature, strongly influenced by currents from abroad, were pro­ ducing pictures of American life which were shockingly antithetical to that concept of America which the tradition had fostered. Applying the romantic idealism of Emerson and Whitman to an examination of conditions as they existed, these men were precursors of both the literature and the literary criticism which proliferated in the twentieth century. Most important, perhaps, among them was William Dean Howells, who was 13, Lutwack, op, cit,. p, 271. 6 eminently exhortative in gaining recognition for realism.Much of his best critical work, particularly his Criticism and Fiction (I89I), which "offers, in its disconnected and unpretentious way, some of the