THE EXAMPLE OF MELVILLE

by Werner Berthoff ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The example of Melville as a writer, rather than a case-history or culture hero, is here Bryn Mawr Professor Berthoff's almost monumental concern. The study thus marks a departure: out go the ""symbolic imagination"" and psychological polarities of the last decade's new criticism, in come the more traditional track-downs of subject, theme, characters and story-telling. And these-as issued through and identified by the gamut of Melvillean grammar (whole chunks of Moby Dick get overturned, throwing up dynamic adjectives, forceful rhythms, all the ""tensile language"") and the unfolding of Melville's universe as both a personal and a formal one, reveal an inward growth of mind outwardly pitted against 18th century Enlightenment, 19th century Romanticism. Professor Berthoff equates the protracted meditations of Pierre with Proustian longueurs, defends Melville's so-called non-dramatic mode and the self-sufficiency of his rhetoric, defines the novels as sort of existential exemplars of being and behavior, rather than as myths, analyses the author's overall curiosity in the ""phenomenal ambiguities"" of human nature re the adventure-peddling and Polynesian settings of Typee or Omoo, the metaphorical metaphysics of Ahab and the whale, and, most especially, the Miltonic magnanimity of Billy Budd. A long haul indeed. Cogent, compelling, as close a critique as any yet made of the Melville canon; it is also among the most lulling, often becalmed in brilliance. But a scholarly must.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Princeton Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION