111*11*1 critical guides hermnn mplville rrmbij-dirk • essays • articles • reviews edited by nick selby COLUMBIA CRITICAL GUIDES Herman Melville Moby-Dick EDITED BY NICK SELBY Series editor: Richard Beynon COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS h*i NEW YORK Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Editor's text copyright © 1998 Nick Selby All rights reserved First published in the Icon Critical Guides series in 1998 by Icon Books Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herman Melville—, Moby-Dick / edited by Nick Selby. p. cm. (Columbia critical guides) Includes bibliographical references and index. — ISBN 0-231-11538-5 (cloth : alk. paper). ISBN 0-231-11539-3 (pbk. alk. paper) : 1. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Moby Dick. 2. Sea — stories, American History and criticism. 3. Whaling in literature. 4. Whales in literature. I. Selby, Nick. II. Series. PS2384.M62H47 1999 813'.3—dc21 98-39507 Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States ofAmerica 987654321 c 10 987654321 p 10 Contents INTRODUCTION 7 DiscussesthewaysinwhichMoby-Dickanditscriticalhistorycanbe seen to engage in a debate about American culture and ideology. Extracts from Melville's essay 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' are included, and demonstrate that many of the subsequent critical debates about Moby- Dick were anticipated by Melville himself. A briefbiography of Melville sets hislifewithin the context ofantebellumAmerica. CHAPTER ONE 17 Early Reviews Surveys the initial critical reaction to Moby-Dick. Extracts from letters Melville wrote during the writing of the novel set the context for the contemporarynewspaperreviewsthatfollow.Thefirstthreeextractsare from reviews in the London Spectator, the London Athenaeum, and from Evert Duyckinck's review that appeared in the New York Literary World. Shorter extracts follow showing the curious and extravagant critical language used to describe Moby-Dick in its early years. The final two extracts are by Henry S. Salt, an English critic, largely responsible for maintaininga criticalinterestinMoby-Dickthroughoutthelatteryearsof the nineteenthcentury. CHAPTER TWO 33 The 'Melville Revival' Examinesthe upsurge ofinterest in Melville that followed WorldWarI. Thereisa discussionofthe impactofwarandmodernismonthe wayin which Melville's novel was read. A brief extract from Carl Van Doren's essayonMoby-Dickforthe CambridgeHistoryofAmericanLiterature (1917) is followed by a long extract from D.H. Lawrence's influential book Studiesin ClassicAmericanLiterature (1922). E.M. Forster's reading ofthe novel from his AspectsoftheNovel (1927) is then followed by an extract from the first serious critical studyofMelville, LewisMumford's Herman Melville (1929). Both these readings show the often bizarre ways in whichcritics struggledtoanalyseMoby-Dick. CHAPTER THREE 51 The 1940s: Moby-Dick and the 'American Renaissance' ExaminesMoby-Dick'scentralplaceinwhatF.O.Matthiessendescribesas an 'American Renaissance' that took place in antebellum America. The firsttwo long extracts are takenfromMatthiessen'sAmericanRenaissance (1941). Adiscussionof Shakespeare'sinfluence oncriticaldiscussionsof Moby-DickisdevelopedbyexaminingCharlesOlson'smagnificentCallMe Ishmael(1947).ThefinalextractisfromRichard Chase'sHermanMelville: A CriticalStudy (1949), andleads toa briefdiscussion ofhow criticismof Moby-Dickhas examinedfundamentalmythsofAmericanidentity. CHAPTER FOUR 76 The 1950s: 'Myth Criticism' and the Growth of American Studies The three extracts in this chapter are all crucial documents in the development of American Studies. This chapter examines the myths of America that have been employed in order to explain Moby-Dick's symbolic language. The first extract is from Henry Murray's influential psychoanalyticreadingofMoby-Dick'InNomineDiaboli' (1951).Thefollow- ing two extracts are from books which set the terms for 'Americanist' criticism, Charles Fiedelson's Symbolism and American Literature (1953), andR.W.B. Lewis' TheAmericanAdam (1955). CHAPTER FIVE 94 Formalist Approaches, Humanist Readings Ranging from 1951 to 1986, the formalist and humanist concerns of theseessaysare considered. Theimportance offormalismandhumanism to the school of 'New Criticism' is discussed in relation to Walter Bezanson'sessay'Moby-Dick:WorkofArt' (1951).Theinfluenceofformalist critical practices is then assessedin relation tothe readings ofMoby-Dick givenbyJohn Seelye in hisbookMelville:TheIronicDiagram (1970), and in Lawrence Buell's essay 'Moby-Dickas Sacred Text', which is extracted from the book New Essays on Moby-Dick (1986), edited by Richard Brodhead. CHAPTER SIX 115 Cultural Materialism and 'Reconstructive' Readings Dealswith theinfluenceof'cultural materialism' onMoby-Dickcriticism. The four extracts in this chapter place Moby-Dick in the context of the mid-nineteenth-century American culture of which it is a product. The firsttwoextractsanalyseMoby-Dickinrelationtospecificaspectsofante- bellum American culture: Paul Royster's essay 'Melville's Economy of Language' (1986) examinestheimpact ofcapitalismonMelville'snovel, and the extract from David Leverenz's Manhood and the American Renaissance (1989) discusses the novel in relation to discourses of man- hood.TherelationshipbetweenMelville'snovelandAmericancultureis examined more generally in the final two extracts, from Leo Bersani's excellent book The CultureofRedemption (1990), and David S. Reynolds' essay '"Its wood could only be American!": Moby-Dick and Antebellum PopularCulture' (1992). CHAPTER SEVEN 146 Deconstructive Reading, 'Post-humanist' Critiques and 'New Americanists' Presents some 'postmodern' perspectives on Moby-Dick. The two main extracts in this chapter show Moby-Dick's complicity in an American ideologicalagenda. DonaldE. Pease'sessay'MobyDickandthe ColdWar' (1985) reads Melville's novel alongside American Cold War ideology of the 1950s. And Wai-chee Dimock's 'Ahab's Manifest Destiny' (1991) deconstructstheimperialistdiscoursesthatunderpinMelville'sdepiction of Ahab. A final, brief, extract from William V. Spanos' recentbook The ErrantArtofMoby-Dick(1995) bringsthechaptertoaclosebyopeningup a consideration of deconstructive critical practices in relation to Moby- DickinparticularandAmericancultureingeneral. BIBLIOGRAPHY 166 ' To Maggie 'Butfarbeneath this wondrous worldupon thesurface, anotherand still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated theforms ofthe nursing mothersofthewhales, andthosethatbytheirenormousgirthseemed shortly to becomemothers. Moby-Dick, Chapter 87, The Grand Armada.' Introduction THE NARRATIVE ofMoby-Dick (1851) opens, famously, withanactof naming. 'CallmeIshmael'isaboldstatementofself-definition, andit is an invitation to the reader's imaginative and interpretive faculties. From the outset, then, Moby-Dick makes us aware that acts of naming and of defining are complex and problematic. They are, necessarily, reciprocal: to define himself, Ishmael needs a readership. To a large extent,justwhatMoby-Dickishasbeendefinedbyitsreadersandcritics. Indeed, thecriticalhistoryofMoby-DickthatissketchedbythisGuidecan beseentobeaseriesofattemptstodefinethebook, tonameitandthus toplace itwithinanunderstoodtradition. Such an attempt to name and defineMoby-Dickis made all the more pressingbecause itis anAmericanbook. And, at the time ofMoby-Dick's firstpublication, therewaslittle criticalconsensusastowhatmightcon- stituteanAmericanbook, letaloneanAmericanliterarytradition. Itwas generally agreed that American 'writing' was inferior to the 'literature' of England, and that any literary qualities it did display were but poor imitations of its European precursors. Writing in 1840, in his massively influential book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville notes that 'the Americans have not yet, properly speaking, got any literature'. He continues his observations about America's literary characteristics by stating 'Only the journalists strike me as truly American.'1 It is hardly surprising, giventhesnobbishattitudeofwhichdeTocqueville'scomment istypical, thatAmericanauthorswerefeltnottowarrantseriousattention. ButwithMoby-Dick,thepossibilitiesforAmericanliteratureseemeda little different. Melville'smasterpiece seemedto signala changedattitude, itshowedAmericanliteraturecomingintoitsown. Herewasabookthat defined itself, and that named its own terms of analysis. Surprisingly, perhaps, it was de Tocqueville who had set out what those terms might be.HehadarguedthatAmericawouldsoonbeabletocarryforthintoits literature the promise ot its democratic politics. His prediction of American literature's deiining'characteristics, made more than a decade before Moby-Dick, is shrewd. And, if we discount his assertion that Americanbooksaremoretypically'shortworks' than 'long' ones, when measured against this definition, Moby-Dick seems to be the archetypical Americanbook, itanswers his callprettyaccurately: MOBY-DICK By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost alwaysstrongandbold.Writerswillbemoreanxioustoworkquickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigour ofthought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than toplease, and to stirpassionsratherthantocharmtaste.2 Throughout this book, we shall see that criticism ofMoby-Dickhas gone hand-in-hand with such attempts to define what American literature mightbe. By extension, then, the struggleto defineMoby-Dickwitnesses America'sownstruggles, as anewnation, toname anddefinethe terms ofits own culture. Moby-Dickis therefore a vital document, so to speak, in an American declaration of cultural independence. All the essays in this Critical Guide show how a reading of Moby-Dick has been used to plot the co-ordinates in a reading of America. Moby-Dick has thus been seen as the key text in the growth, development and reassessment of American Studies. Theargumentsthatare rehearsedoverMelville'stext are ones that tell of wider debates in American culture and ideology in general. In 1851, then, Melville provided America with a language to examine its liberal democracy and its emerging capitalism, a means to define how its different voices and identities compete within a united text, and how its struggles for power mark its growing identity within worldpolitics. Uptothe present day, criticismofMoby-Dickisstillassess- ing this language, still engaging with the book as a means of engaging withAmerica. ItwasMelvillehimselfwhosetoutmanyofthetermsbywhichsub- sequentcriticismwouldengagewithMoby-Dick.Thishedidinhisreview essay 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' (1850) which was written whilst he was at work on Moby-Dick. In this essay, he reviews a book of short stories, Mossesfrom an OldManse, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville had justrecentlymadetheacquaintanceofHawthorne. Asneighboursliving ona rural estate near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the two were tobecome firmfriends. 'HawthorneandHisMosses'isimportantnotsimplyforthe enthusiastic account it gives of Hawthorne's work, but also because it delineates many of Melville's attitudes towards American literature, attitudes that are relevant to a reading of Moby-Dick. The extracts from 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' which followtrace some ofthese attitudes, especially Melville's idea of American literary genius, his sense of the relationship oftheAmericanwriterto Shakespeare, andthe importance ofdemocracytoAmericanliterature. 8