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University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company jl [ 73-9989 I MAIER, Rosemarie Abendroth., 1944- | MELVILLE'S PERSONAE IN MOBY-DICK. 1 \ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I Ph.D., 1972 I Language and Literature, general i 1 1 | University Microfilms, A XERQ\ Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. 3 MELVILLE'S PERSONAE IN MOBY-DICK BY ROSEMARIE ABENDROTH MAIER B.A., Nazareth College of Rochester, 1966 A.M., University of Illinois, 1967 THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972 Urbana, Illinois UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN THE GRADUATE COLLEGE May, 1972 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BV ROSEMARIE ABENDROTH MAIER KMTTTT.KD MELVILLE'S PERSONAE IN MOBY-DICK BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF_ DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IgUj-Q'iL /^i Vi^/Mv In Charge of Thesis ^ Head of Department Recommendation concurred inf y*. £- ' /r°*t Committee on Final Examinationf t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's. DS17 PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to record my gratitude to Eva Benton, of the University of Illinois English Library, for her help in locating a substantial number of the works I list in my bibliography. To Edward Davidson, who directed this thesis, I offer an understated "thank you." His initial patience with my progress contrasts tellingly with his subsequent celerity in reading and evaluating my text—a celerity that has made possible my post-doctoral exploration of the big sky country that both of us love. To Steve, my husband, for fulfilling his parts of the "contract" of which my completion of this thesis is half, thanks are due less than quiet congratulations. A NOTE ON THE TEXT In my references to the text of Moby-Dick, I quote from the edition of Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 19 67), because their edition provides, at the present time, the most authoritative rendering of Melville's text. Because the definitive edition of Moby-Dick has not yet been published by Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, and because Moby- Dick exists in many editions of varying authority, I cite my references by chapter rather than by page. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. PERSONA 13 1. Implications of the Classical Mask 17 2. Yeats's Mask as Metaphor 26 3. Jung's Mediating "Persona" 56 II. PERSONA, MODE, AND GENRE 90 1. Mode 91 2. Genre 10 8 III. THE VOICES OF ISHMAEL 129 1. Young Ishmael: Modes 135 2. Young Ishmael: Genres 148 3. Elder Ishmael 157 IV. OMNISCIENCE, AUTHORITY, AND THE HISTOR 170 1. The Histor 173 2. Melville's Omniscient Persona 183 V. THE ANTI-NARRATORS 211 1. The Dramatist 214 2. The Cetologist 232 3. The "Squitchy" Voices 250 VI. PERSONA AND THE SYMBOL IN MOBY-DICK 260 1. Symbol 261 2. Structure 266 3. Significance 288 BIBLIOGRAPHY 29 8 VITA 309 INTRODUCTION Moby-Dick is Melville's greatest work of fiction. It is, perhaps, the greatest work of fiction produced by any American author; yet, as an example of prose narration, it is a work almost hopelessly flawed by inconsistency. "In the relationship between the teller and the tale, and that other relationship between the teller and the audience, lies the essence of narrative art." In Moby-Dick, neither of these relationships is always clear: the story of The Whale (if indeed Moby-Dick is merely the story of The Whale) is told sometimes by a character we know as Ishmael, sometimes by an intrusive author we might assume to be Melville himself, and sometimes by no recognizable voice at all. As the voice of the narrator varies, so do the viewpoints from which the story is told: at first, Moby-Dick is an adventure story, a reminiscence of the excitement and the humor of whaling life; then, with the introduction of Ahab, the novel takes on the quality of a tragic allegory wherein is sketched the nemesis of man's monomaniacal will to power; but Moby-Dick is also a paean to the life of whaling men, a hymn to the greatness of the Leviathan, and a handbook for the study of practical cetology. With its shifts in persona, Moby-Dick is not one 1 2 narrative but several, and with the varying viewpoints it embodies, it is a work of prose that defies any single generic classification. That it belongs to no single genre is a fact which makes Moby-Dick among the most difficult of books for the critic to approach. If he assumes that Moby-Dick is a novel— for "on the surface Melville's book is a novel: it is a prose narrative of a certain length dealing with possible men 2 and possible events" —the critic will note with dismay the faulty characterization, the unrealistic dialogue, the melo­ dramatic plot, and the apparently irrelevant but enormous digressions on whale lines and fast fish and Hindu gods and maritime law. Should the critic assume that Moby-Dick is not a novel but instead an epic, or a lengthy prose lyric, or a rather aberrant dramatic form, he puts himself in the same sort of dilemma: no matter what the measure he uses, he will find the work falling short of it, or else—no doubt frustrated by the work's protean nature—the critic will narrow his angle of vision, ignore extraneous details, regard intently what he wants to see, and pronounce Moby-Dick a dramatic tragedy in 3 five acts. Here we are close to the source of one of the greatest problems—or wonders—that Moby-Dick poses, for both critics (the one who finds it an aberrant drama and the one who discovers in it a classical tragedy) could very probably be correct. If we purposefully ignore those readings of Moby-Dick which try to deal with the book's total meaning, which try to 3 decipher and disentangle the book's symbols in order to produce an interpretation that gives a coherent answer to the question posed by the literary existence of the White Whale, then we shall have eliminated roughly half of what has been written about Melville's masterpiece. Before we leave this hermeneutic criticism behind as a region too vast to chart,—more literally, as a mass of writing too immense to consider since its object is only tangential to the direction of this study—we should note briefly that it does exist, and that, taken by itself, its mere bulk would elevate to prominence almost any author's major novel. Much has been written about what Moby-Dick means. But the very bulk of this writing indicates that there is little agreement about that elusive meaning. An interpretation of a literary work must begin somewhere; theme does not exist of itself but is generated by the interrelation of other literary elements: the progression and outcome of incidents, the qualities embodied by the various characters, the use of setting throughout the work, and, finally, the kind of literary art that the work is. It is a reasonable assumption (if not a fact) that the diversity of critical opinion concerning the "meaning" of Moby-Dick results from the diversity of opinion about the nature of the book. And we return to that ma]or problem—of kind, of genre, of literary nature. The two hypothetical critics mentioned earlier—the one who sees Moby-Dick as a poorly wrought drama and the one who sees in it a true classical tragedy—will serve to illuminate 4 one of my basic beliefs: that, until he makes plain what he is talking about, the critic of Moby-Dick cannot be denied his claim to a valid criticism of Melville's work.