Reading Herman Melville＇s Billy Budd as a revenge text, this paper examines the actions of the three protagonists against each other, including John Claggart＇s revenge against Billy Budd, the reason for which are ma...Reading Herman Melville＇s Billy Budd as a revenge text, this paper examines the actions of the three protagonists against each other, including John Claggart＇s revenge against Billy Budd, the reason for which are matters for speculation, and Billy＇s violence towards Claggart in front of Captain Vere, and Vere＇s insistence on enforcing the martial law to judge Billy. I argue that law is operating politically, however just it seems, and maintain that Billy＇s act of violence towards Claggart is in Benjamin＇s words ＂divine violence,＂ which is on the side of justice, as opposed to law. Comparing different interpretations of this posthumous novella regarding revenge and violence, this paper revisits what deconstruction has to say about divine violence, attempting to shed light on the relationship between justice and divine violence. 1 argue that there is something ＂devilish＂ in Melville＇s text, refusing to settle down on any single, close interpretation, and that ＂inner diabolism＂ （in D. H. Lawrence＇s words） is even critical of Billy＇s innocence.展开更多
This paper is aimed at interpreting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville's view of nature clearly by briefly analyzing their representative works. And this paper is composed of four parts. ...This paper is aimed at interpreting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville's view of nature clearly by briefly analyzing their representative works. And this paper is composed of four parts. Chapter Ⅰ will make a detailed analysis of Emerson's view of nature and make a further investigation of his view by analyzing his work Nature.Chapter Ⅱ is about Thoreau's view of nature and his attitude to nature through his work Walden. Chapter Ⅲ firstly makes a brief introduction of Melville's view of nature and then interprets it by explaining the symbolic meaning of main characters' names in his famous work Moby-Dick. And the last chapter makes a simple comparison among their views of nature to give a further understanding of the view of nature in American Literature.展开更多
This article is intended as a differential contribution to the study of Melville, still the central novelist of American literature in his complex, meditative negotiations of the various and often contradictory strand...This article is intended as a differential contribution to the study of Melville, still the central novelist of American literature in his complex, meditative negotiations of the various and often contradictory strands of the history of ideas that have impacted the United States since its founding generations: Calvinism, democratic ethics, Emersonian self-reliance, and even the skeptical mode of vision of American modernism(as characterized by writers of immigrant or Southern provenance such as O'Neill, or Faulkner), yet which Melville tellingly associates with Shakespeare and Hawthorne. Indeed, I take as a starting point Deleuze's assertion that Melville stands as the precursor to a crucial line of nihilistic thinking continuing in Nietzsche and culminating in literary modernism, and I explore the ramifications of this claim with reference to Melville's disastrous and often derided novel Pierre(1852), a bitter and digressive rumination on American life and letters following the critical and commercial failure of Moby Dick. A still controversial semi-narrative account of disavowed incest and class intolerance in the privileged, Northeastern milieu of Melville's early years, Pierre is also his most philosophical work up to that point, abundant in stylistic and structural experiment, most particularly in regard to what might connect fiction and literary language to contemporary philosophical discourses of idealism, metaphysics, and democratic ethics. Melville ultimately finds the crux of this connection in metaphor as that which links sensual, aesthetic, and cognitive experience to the abstract ideological commitments that govern our moral choices. Crucially, that link is neither simplistically causal nor necessarily positive.I argue that Melville slyly associates the incongruent literary styles that he deploys in Pierre with the differing, contesting philosophical world-views that the novel explicitly evokes(most notably the so-called "Transcendentalism" of Emerson). The vehicle for this experiment appears to be a rather surface-oriented view of literary style characterized by an extravagance of metaphoric density. It is this quality that, I argue, seems to divide Pierre into two distinct conceptual and stylistic parts: the fi rst is characterized by an exalted, ecstatic literary rhetoricrepresenting the confidence and self-reliance of the young hero, characterized by a rather Emersonian ‘organic unity' of nature and the mind's creative and poetic faculties that is meant to transcend all questions of literary taste. The style here is ‘enthusiastic,' as Melville characterizes his eponymous protagonist, thus relating Pierre to what cultural historians have noted as the chief quality of democratic optimism, Emersonian philosophy, and what Harold Bloom calls "The American Religion." The second, conveyed through what could be called a series of styles and variations whose only commonality is the critical reduction of and skepticism towards our "symbol-making capacity"(Sacvan Bercovitch), is associated with the novels' dark heroine Isabel, a spiritual seductress represented by uncanny, sensual imagery, and a lack of causal, narrative, temporal, or descriptive coherence. She represents all that is unutterable in human experience, up against which Pierre's impulsive self-reliance and selfdefi ned moral absolutism crashes. This second half of the book is fi tted with astonishing(and subsequently condemned) negativity towards received ethical and literary discourses of midcentury America: including a cryptic pseudo-philosophical tract on the incompatibility of time and(Christian) truth that parallels Deleuze's claims.In view of this contrast, metaphor in Pierre acts as a kind of smokescreen, calling attention to its own palpable richness as a desirable, aesthetic mode of experience, and yet concealing much more than it reveals, essentially misdirecting all communicants of language from actuality, including that which our socially determined and hierarchical language does not wish us to acknowledge, from the social abject(Isabel and the prurient discipline of working class sexuality) to the Freudian abject—away from what we might generally call knowledge of the world(which for Melville is invariably negative and tragic) but also, more ambiguously, from practical wisdom. Philosophically, the result is a sort of tragic reinterpretation(rather than rejection) of Emerson in a Shakespearean mode: for if a leisurely mode of satisfaction in reference to the spiritual authority of nature is initially satirized as the privilege of a landed gentry who neither know the world(in its material and social forces) nor themselves, nevertheless, the ultimate fruitlessness and irrelevancy of human endeavor in a fated and indifferent cosmos necessitates a tragic self-knowing, or emptying out of personal illusions, that paradoxically liberates the decisive individual action that Emerson prizes, even as such action(in Melville's novel) condemns the doer to social ostracism and extinction.展开更多
In the early 1950s,at the height of America’s McCarthyite witch hunts and anti-communist hysteria,Trinidad-born C.L.R.James,who had been living in the United States illegally since 1938,was arrested and held for depo...In the early 1950s,at the height of America’s McCarthyite witch hunts and anti-communist hysteria,Trinidad-born C.L.R.James,who had been living in the United States illegally since 1938,was arrested and held for deportation on the basis of his Marxist philosophy and activism.While imprisoned on Ellis Island,he drafted the text of Mariners,Renegades and Castaways:The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In,a book that is equal parts literary criticism and argument for the very Americanness of James’s revolutionary thought.This essay examines the discussions within James’s revolutionary organization surrounding the composition of that work,and the centrality of Melville to their visions of a revolutionary America.展开更多
Herman Melville(1819-1891) is one of the famous writers in the history of American and world literature. Moby Dick is one of the masterpieces of Melville, and it is also his most famous ocean works in his late life. M...Herman Melville(1819-1891) is one of the famous writers in the history of American and world literature. Moby Dick is one of the masterpieces of Melville, and it is also his most famous ocean works in his late life. Moby Dick describes a story on Captain Ahab took revenge on white whale. This paper will discuss Captain Ahab's paranoid personality, and reveal how Melville reflected in the works: coexistence between human and nature. A brief description will be provided for the writer's life and his works, and then I will discuss Captain Ahab's paranoid personality through his whaling capturing process. Then, I will discuss obtaining principles of Captain Ahab, Mate Starbuck, Crew Ishmael, and reveal the Captain's tragic causes and reflected thinking. Finally, I will make a conclusion only if people adopt right obtaining principles to natural resources, could we live with nature altogether.展开更多
Moby-Dick, a great masterpiece by Herman Melville, is acclaimed as an epic of the sea such as no man has equaled. This thesis focuses on Ahab and the aesthetic sublime in Moby Dick. Ahab proves himself to be a figure ...Moby-Dick, a great masterpiece by Herman Melville, is acclaimed as an epic of the sea such as no man has equaled. This thesis focuses on Ahab and the aesthetic sublime in Moby Dick. Ahab proves himself to be a figure of the aesthetic sublime in his chasing and fighting against the giant whale.展开更多
文摘Reading Herman Melville＇s Billy Budd as a revenge text, this paper examines the actions of the three protagonists against each other, including John Claggart＇s revenge against Billy Budd, the reason for which are matters for speculation, and Billy＇s violence towards Claggart in front of Captain Vere, and Vere＇s insistence on enforcing the martial law to judge Billy. I argue that law is operating politically, however just it seems, and maintain that Billy＇s act of violence towards Claggart is in Benjamin＇s words ＂divine violence,＂ which is on the side of justice, as opposed to law. Comparing different interpretations of this posthumous novella regarding revenge and violence, this paper revisits what deconstruction has to say about divine violence, attempting to shed light on the relationship between justice and divine violence. 1 argue that there is something ＂devilish＂ in Melville＇s text, refusing to settle down on any single, close interpretation, and that ＂inner diabolism＂ （in D. H. Lawrence＇s words） is even critical of Billy＇s innocence.
文摘This paper is aimed at interpreting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville's view of nature clearly by briefly analyzing their representative works. And this paper is composed of four parts. Chapter Ⅰ will make a detailed analysis of Emerson's view of nature and make a further investigation of his view by analyzing his work Nature.Chapter Ⅱ is about Thoreau's view of nature and his attitude to nature through his work Walden. Chapter Ⅲ firstly makes a brief introduction of Melville's view of nature and then interprets it by explaining the symbolic meaning of main characters' names in his famous work Moby-Dick. And the last chapter makes a simple comparison among their views of nature to give a further understanding of the view of nature in American Literature.
文摘This article is intended as a differential contribution to the study of Melville, still the central novelist of American literature in his complex, meditative negotiations of the various and often contradictory strands of the history of ideas that have impacted the United States since its founding generations: Calvinism, democratic ethics, Emersonian self-reliance, and even the skeptical mode of vision of American modernism(as characterized by writers of immigrant or Southern provenance such as O'Neill, or Faulkner), yet which Melville tellingly associates with Shakespeare and Hawthorne. Indeed, I take as a starting point Deleuze's assertion that Melville stands as the precursor to a crucial line of nihilistic thinking continuing in Nietzsche and culminating in literary modernism, and I explore the ramifications of this claim with reference to Melville's disastrous and often derided novel Pierre(1852), a bitter and digressive rumination on American life and letters following the critical and commercial failure of Moby Dick. A still controversial semi-narrative account of disavowed incest and class intolerance in the privileged, Northeastern milieu of Melville's early years, Pierre is also his most philosophical work up to that point, abundant in stylistic and structural experiment, most particularly in regard to what might connect fiction and literary language to contemporary philosophical discourses of idealism, metaphysics, and democratic ethics. Melville ultimately finds the crux of this connection in metaphor as that which links sensual, aesthetic, and cognitive experience to the abstract ideological commitments that govern our moral choices. Crucially, that link is neither simplistically causal nor necessarily positive.I argue that Melville slyly associates the incongruent literary styles that he deploys in Pierre with the differing, contesting philosophical world-views that the novel explicitly evokes(most notably the so-called "Transcendentalism" of Emerson). The vehicle for this experiment appears to be a rather surface-oriented view of literary style characterized by an extravagance of metaphoric density. It is this quality that, I argue, seems to divide Pierre into two distinct conceptual and stylistic parts: the fi rst is characterized by an exalted, ecstatic literary rhetoricrepresenting the confidence and self-reliance of the young hero, characterized by a rather Emersonian ‘organic unity' of nature and the mind's creative and poetic faculties that is meant to transcend all questions of literary taste. The style here is ‘enthusiastic,' as Melville characterizes his eponymous protagonist, thus relating Pierre to what cultural historians have noted as the chief quality of democratic optimism, Emersonian philosophy, and what Harold Bloom calls "The American Religion." The second, conveyed through what could be called a series of styles and variations whose only commonality is the critical reduction of and skepticism towards our "symbol-making capacity"(Sacvan Bercovitch), is associated with the novels' dark heroine Isabel, a spiritual seductress represented by uncanny, sensual imagery, and a lack of causal, narrative, temporal, or descriptive coherence. She represents all that is unutterable in human experience, up against which Pierre's impulsive self-reliance and selfdefi ned moral absolutism crashes. This second half of the book is fi tted with astonishing(and subsequently condemned) negativity towards received ethical and literary discourses of midcentury America: including a cryptic pseudo-philosophical tract on the incompatibility of time and(Christian) truth that parallels Deleuze's claims.In view of this contrast, metaphor in Pierre acts as a kind of smokescreen, calling attention to its own palpable richness as a desirable, aesthetic mode of experience, and yet concealing much more than it reveals, essentially misdirecting all communicants of language from actuality, including that which our socially determined and hierarchical language does not wish us to acknowledge, from the social abject(Isabel and the prurient discipline of working class sexuality) to the Freudian abject—away from what we might generally call knowledge of the world(which for Melville is invariably negative and tragic) but also, more ambiguously, from practical wisdom. Philosophically, the result is a sort of tragic reinterpretation(rather than rejection) of Emerson in a Shakespearean mode: for if a leisurely mode of satisfaction in reference to the spiritual authority of nature is initially satirized as the privilege of a landed gentry who neither know the world(in its material and social forces) nor themselves, nevertheless, the ultimate fruitlessness and irrelevancy of human endeavor in a fated and indifferent cosmos necessitates a tragic self-knowing, or emptying out of personal illusions, that paradoxically liberates the decisive individual action that Emerson prizes, even as such action(in Melville's novel) condemns the doer to social ostracism and extinction.
文摘In the early 1950s,at the height of America’s McCarthyite witch hunts and anti-communist hysteria,Trinidad-born C.L.R.James,who had been living in the United States illegally since 1938,was arrested and held for deportation on the basis of his Marxist philosophy and activism.While imprisoned on Ellis Island,he drafted the text of Mariners,Renegades and Castaways:The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In,a book that is equal parts literary criticism and argument for the very Americanness of James’s revolutionary thought.This essay examines the discussions within James’s revolutionary organization surrounding the composition of that work,and the centrality of Melville to their visions of a revolutionary America.
文摘Herman Melville(1819-1891) is one of the famous writers in the history of American and world literature. Moby Dick is one of the masterpieces of Melville, and it is also his most famous ocean works in his late life. Moby Dick describes a story on Captain Ahab took revenge on white whale. This paper will discuss Captain Ahab's paranoid personality, and reveal how Melville reflected in the works: coexistence between human and nature. A brief description will be provided for the writer's life and his works, and then I will discuss Captain Ahab's paranoid personality through his whaling capturing process. Then, I will discuss obtaining principles of Captain Ahab, Mate Starbuck, Crew Ishmael, and reveal the Captain's tragic causes and reflected thinking. Finally, I will make a conclusion only if people adopt right obtaining principles to natural resources, could we live with nature altogether.
文摘Moby-Dick, a great masterpiece by Herman Melville, is acclaimed as an epic of the sea such as no man has equaled. This thesis focuses on Ahab and the aesthetic sublime in Moby Dick. Ahab proves himself to be a figure of the aesthetic sublime in his chasing and fighting against the giant whale.
