Melville's Allusions to Religion

Melville's Allusions to Religion
Author: Gail H. Coffler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2004-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313072701

The long-awaited companion volume to Gail Coffler's first book, Melville's Classical Allusions, has finally arrived. In this new volume, thousands of references to Judeo-Christian and other religions in Herman Melville's books are references. The index includes references to all of his novels, short stories, poetry, lectures, letters, and journals. With it, one can trace a given allusion through the entire canon, or research any individual work, such as Moby Dick, Billy Budd, or Benito Cereno from beginning to end. Readers interested in Melville's writing and philosophy as well as researchers of 19th century literature, culture, and religion will appreciate this book. This volume begins with a master index that lists all religious allusions and their location throughout Melville's works. Next, there is an alphabetical index and a sequential index of all allusions in each of the individual volumes. The sequential index lists allusions in their chronological page order and identifies many bible passages alluded to or quoted by Melville, citing the bible book, chapter, and verse. A supplementary index alphabetically lists the allusions in Melville's Correspondence and Journals. The book concludes with a glossary briefly explaining all allusions and gives cross references to related entries.

Biblical parallels in Herman Melville ́s Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative

Biblical parallels in Herman Melville ́s Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative
Author: Eva Daub
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 11
Release: 2002-04-10
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3638119971

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0 (B), University of Bonn (American Studies), course: Introduction to English Literature, language: English, abstract: Biblical parallels in Herman Melville ́s Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative Herman Melville was one of the most famous American writers during the 19th century. To him we owe one of the best known classical pieces of literature: Moby Dick. Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative was the last of his works to be published in 1924. Until today critics could not reach agreement on a common interpretation of this short-story, written by Melville both in prose and in verse. And it is certainly true that you can read it on a number of different levels. Some see the piece as an examination of society which brings together embodiments of various political philosophies in Melville’s final comment on the place of good and evil in modern civilization. Others relate the short novel to a spiritual autobiography of Melville himself. In the following I would like to focus on the story as a parallel to the epic Christian battle between good and evil with examples of biblical allusions that were used by the author. [...]

One Foot in the Finite

One Foot in the Finite
Author: K. L. Evans
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810136147

One Foot in the Finite inspires a radical shift in our view of Melville’s project in Moby-Dick, for its guiding notion is that Melville uses his book to call into question the naturalism that distinguishes the early modern period in Europe. Naturalism is not only the idea that reality is exhausted by nature, or that there exists a domain of physical entities subject to autonomous laws and unaffected by human ingenuity; it also implies a counterpart, a world of pretense and deception, a domain of mental entities ontologically distinct from physical entities and therefore constituting a different realm. To naturalists, whales are part of the background of existing objects against which man assembles his various, subjective, rather arbitrary interpretations. But in Moby-Dick Melville casts upon the world a more ingenious eye, one free of the dualist veil. He confronts a basic misconception: that the contents of consciousness comprise a different order from physical life. He rubs out the dividing line modernity has drawn between the human world of names or concepts and the nonhuman world of plants, creatures, geological features, and natural forces. Melville’s philosophizing, carried by fiction, has dramatic consequence. It overturns our view of language as a system of mental representations that might turn out to represent falsely.

The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2011-09-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316192163

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

'Old Antiquities and New Features'. Melville's Style and Literary Influences in 'Moby Dick'

'Old Antiquities and New Features'. Melville's Style and Literary Influences in 'Moby Dick'
Author: Lindsey McIntosh
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 16
Release: 2015-09-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3668044546

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1st, University of Strathclyde, course: English Literature, language: English, abstract: The ambition of this short literary essay is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to briefly explore some of the literary sources used to shape and create Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick. A multitude of literary sources could be suggested to influence Melville’s work but the principle works focused upon in this discussion are William Shakespeare’s tragic play Macbeth and John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’. By drawing upon linguistic and symbolic parallels present between Moby Dick and these two works, the essay aims to show how Melville alludes to classical sources to create a refreshingly modern piece of work. The second goal of the essay is to explore in greater detail Melville’s use of language in ‘Moby Dick.’ Several critics have noted in past discussion that Moby Dick’s triumph lies embedded in its sophisticated verse, with Richard Brodhead crediting a large portion of the novel’s greatness to be owed to the author’s powerful command on the English language. With this view in mind, the essay examines some of Melville’s own linguistic accomplishments in order to decide whether “more persistently than anything else – more persistently than it is the heroic, or philosophic, or whatever – Moby-Dick is a book in love with language” (Brodhead, 1986).