Melville’s AnatomiesUniversity of California Press, 1999 M03 5 - 418 pages In fascinating new contextual readings of four of Herman Melville's novels—Typee, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Pierre—Samuel Otter delves into Melville's exorbitant prose to show how he anatomizes ideology, making it palpable and strange. Otter portrays Melville as deeply concerned with issues of race, the body, gender, sentiment, and national identity. He articulates a range of contemporary texts (narratives of travelers, seamen, and slaves; racial and aesthetic treatises; fiction; poetry; and essays) in order to flesh out Melville's discursive world. Otter presents Melville's works as "inside narratives" offering material analyses of consciousness. Chapters center on the tattooed faces in Typee, the flogged bodies in White-Jacket, the scrutinized heads in Moby-Dick, and the desiring eyes and eloquent, constricted hearts of Pierre. Otter shows how Melville's books tell of the epic quest to know the secrets of the human body. Rather than dismiss contemporary beliefs about race, self, and nation, Melville inhabits them, acknowledging their appeal and examining their sway. Meticulously researched and brilliantly argued, this groundbreaking study links Melville's words to his world and presses the relations between discourse and ideology. It will deeply influence all future studies of Melville and his work. |
Contents
| 9 | |
| 11 | |
| 20 | |
Jumping out of Ones Skin in WhiteJacket | 50 |
SHIP STATE AND BODY | 52 |
THE SCENE OF FLOGGING IN DOUGLASS PENNINGTON AND NORTHUP | 58 |
THE ANALOGY WITH SLAVERY IN LEECH MCNALLY BROWNE AND DANA | 67 |
WHITEJACKETS EMANCIPATION | 77 |
NATURAL FEATURES AND NATIONAL CHARACTER | 174 |
THOMAS COLE AND THE VISUAL EMBRACE | 178 |
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS AND THE TASTE FOR SCENERY | 184 |
SUSAN COOPER AND THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION | 190 |
MELVILLES CLOGGED OPTICS | 193 |
Inscribed Hearts in Pierre | 208 |
THE HEART ON THE PAGE | 209 |
DONALD GRANT MITCHELLS TREATISES CONCERNING THE SENTIMENTAL AFFECTIONS | 213 |
SAILING ON | 96 |
Getting inside Heads in MobyDick | 101 |
SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON AND THE QUEST FOR CRANIAL CONTENTS | 102 |
THE LAWS OF ANATOMY IN ANTEBELLUM ETHNOLOGY | 118 |
THE ETHNOLOGICAL CRITIQUES OF DOUGLASS BROWN AND APESS | 126 |
CETOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY IN MOBYDICK | 132 |
TO LOOK AND TO KNOW | 159 |
Penetrating Eyes in Pierre | 172 |
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aesthetic African American American Scenery analogy analyzes anatomy antebellum Apess argues artist Bachelor Benito Cereno body Brown cannibalism Captain cetology chapter character chattel Cole's color corporeal Crania Ægyptiaca Crania Americana critics culture describes difference Douglass edited Essays ethnology European eyes face feeling female Fern's fiction figure flesh flogging Fowlers Hawthorne heart Herman Melville History human images imagination Indian Isabel Ishmael jacket John Karky's landscape Langsdorff letter lines literary Literature male Marquesan Melville's metaphors Mitchell and Curtis Mitchell's Moby Moby-Dick narrative narrator narrator's Nathaniel Parker Willis Native American natural Negro nineteenth-century Nott Parker phrenology picturesque Pierre Pierre's poem Polynesian prose Queequeg race racial readers Reveries rhetoric Ruth Hall Saddle Meadows sailor and slave Samuel George Morton satire scene sentimental sketches skin skull slavery Sperm Whale story tattooing Thomas Cole tion Tommo Typee University Press viewer visual Voyage whale's head White-Jacket William Willis writing York
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Page 7 - What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,— it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.