American Romanticism                                                            

Prof. Bruce Harvey

AN OVERVIEW OF MOBY-DICK + ESPECIALLY

RELEVANT PASSAGES IN THE FIRST TWO-THIRDS

FOUR REASONS TO LIKE IT BEYOND THE TRAGIC/EPIC NARRATIVE PER SE:

1) MD's encyclopedic, symphonic structure brings together into one vast whole all the issues and best qualities animating other writers of the period:

            --Emerson: philosophical idealism/transcendentalism (supersensuous meaning resides behind day-to-day appearances)

            --Fuller: exquisite poetic prose style and exploration of femininity/masculinity

            --Dickinson: keen probings of the introverted personality and preoccupation with mortality

            --Douglass: aware of the dynamics of power/servitude

            --Poe: exploration of narcissism                       

            --Thoreau: beautiful/sublime descriptions of nature (but Melville aware of nature's danger also)

            --Whitman: democratical and invests "low" tasks/pursuits with dignity and grandeur

2) MD is a book in love with language and different styles/genres:

            --Calvinistic sermon: Father Mapple's sermon

            --Elizabethan soliloquy/tragedy

            --parodies of legal briefs

            --operatic/musical ensemble ("Midnight, Forecastle")

            --epic or quest romance to slay a monster

            --lyrical           

            --tall-tale exaggeration (traveling corkscrew harpoon, 14)

            --condensed/incisive or amazing collisions of imagery

                        14        pastoral mowing/ death club

                        42        can't stove soul

                        105      no duplicate ship

3) MD is a book in love with philosophical surmise/speculation:

            --especially in CH 99 "Doubloon": different perspectives: relativism of meaning, transcendental meaning, nihilism                      

            --Platonic mysticism (Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson) or death: CH 35 "The Mast-Head" 172-173          

            --how are we to interpret nature?

                        --vicious: sharks 329

                        --or benign: CH 87 "The Grand Armada" 423: nursing whales

                        --any meaning to the exterior world at all? CH 42 "The Whiteness of the Whale" 205/212

            --conjunction of concreteness/love of philosophy create lines that are acute and incisive

                        --42: can't stave in a soul

                        --306: precariousness of life via image of whale line, CH 60 "The Line"

4) MD provides a fascinating history of a commodity, how a product (oil for lamps) is processed from its natural setting.

OVERALL STRUCTURE

--centripetal: Ahab---basic structure of revenge/catastrophe linear and monomaniacal

--centrifugal: Ishmael---mythic allusions/inclusive /elastic/digressive/passive
 

TECHNIQUES TO ELEVATE STORY OF WHALING:

--Extract's function: wealth of allusion, before story proper begins, lends grandeur to an industry of butchery

--Biblical imagery: agony of crucifixion/ transgression of Sodom & Gomorrah/ Elijah-crazed prophet 10

--Sublimity of whaling: mixture of beauty/horror 13

--Ahab: tragic/epic hero--larger than life because compared to locomotives, trees, & old bears

            88                    described

            101                  mysterious transgression

            134-36             superhuman personality, ennobled by suffering, but inflexible, self-damned, mark of Cain--will refuse pastoral softness/hope of renewal

            177                  sways them thru his suffering/the ritual

            179                  what happens to Starbuck? just acquiesces

            183                  is he human or mechanical?

            178/200           why does he hate the whale--agent or not?

            258                  becomes obsessive in seeking meaning/signs

THEMES:

1) Pastoral reverie/ hope for renewal vs. obsessive narcissistic gloom/bereavement for wound

            113                  pastoral vision

            425                  (CH 87 "Grand Armada"): mildness in the midst of woe

            526                  pastoral vs. iron stiffness of Ahab (CH 111, "The Pacific")

2) Sociality/love/non-aggressive homoeroticism or phallicism vs. male aggression/power/domination

            6/57                 Ishmael oriented toward love/socialness/New Testament forgiveness/camaraderie vs Ahab's Old Testament        
                                    grandeur/seeking  of vengeance

            141                  no relaxed, sociable smoking for Ahab

            131-33             democracy vs. despotism

            455                  beginning CH 94 "A Squeeze of..."

3) Economic-industrial world of production vs. home/feminine (off stage domesticity)

            89                    does Ahab have a family? yes, but offstage

            311                  savageness of the hunt  

            391                 CH 81 "Pequod Meets the Virgin"--Starbuck shows humane feelings vs. aggression of the hunt

4) Critique of Idealist philosophy

            CH35               "The Masthead"

            377                  inside the whale head

            464                  balance of realism/idealism or sorrow/joy

5) Desire for interpretation/classification (order) vs unfathomableness of ourselves/world or subjectivity of interpretation (thus world void of meaning)

            5                      maybe all narcissistic projection

            168                  different masts (tongue-in-cheek classification)

            295-6               different whales (tongue-in-cheek)

            CH42               "Whiteness of the Whale"

            380                  "The Prairie"

            414                  "The Tail"

            CH99               "The Doubloon"