SIX VIEWS OF MELVILLE

Author(s): PAUL MCCARTHY

Source: Studies in the Novel , summer 1978, Vol. 10, No. 2 (summer 1978), pp. 267-277
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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REVIEW-ESSAY

SIX VIEWS OF MELVILLE

PAUL MCCARTHY

To my knowledge, no highly specialized studies?psychological,

epistemological, or critical?of Melville's work appeared in 1976 or 1977. For the
time being, at least, critics seem to be selecting more traditional or conventional
topics and writing scholarly treatments of them. Moby-Dick resumes what may
be its rightful place as the chief subject, and Pierre receives a merited share of
critical attention. The continuing interest in Melville's stories is represented in
two 1977 books, and attempts to place the novels in the context of the nineteenth
century American novel are presented in two other studies. While only one of six
books to be considered here appears comparable in quality to Sealts's Early Lives
of Melville, 1974, all are worthwhile contributions.
T. Walter Herbert's Moby-Dick and Calvinism: A World Dismantled, one of
two works concentrating largely on the novel, provides the most informed ex?
amination yet of Melville's religious background and its influences upon the
writer and Moby-Dick. Herbert believes that despite conflicting religious in?
fluences in Melville's background and different views of reality in the nineteenth
century Melville was able to cope with the confusions and show in Moby-Dick "a
sophisticated, acute, and prophetic attack on the scheme of theological ideas that
was taken as an accurate description of ultimate reality in his time" (p. 5). Stating
that existential, symbolic, and psychological studies of Melville do not deal ade?
quately with the distinctive religious and historic idiom of Melville's time,
Herbert proposes to meet that need by relying upon work by Gilman, Howard,
and Leyda and by providing new biographical and historical evidence. While
acknowledging the importance of Murray's seminal work, Herbert believes that
Melville's philosophic interests and preoccupations were not in effect a symptom
of neurotic problems, or a mask of deep psychic distress, but were part and parcel
of such problems. "Problems of doctrine were for him continuous with problems
of experience" (p. 15). In his development of this general thesis, Herbert
acknowledges the importance of the ideas of Erik Erickson and others stressing
cultural influences in neurosis.
The painstaking scholarship of Herbert's study is evident in the four chapters
on Melville's religious background. Citing Findings of Gilman and Leyda, ad

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268 / REVIEW-ESSAY

ditional Gansevoort-Lansing correspondence, and religious materials of the

1820s and earlier, Herbert describes Melville's Calvinist and Unitarian in?
heritance and its seeming unity and good effects. Neither unity nor good effects
lasted for long. Allan Melville, a model of manners and piety, was convinced that
he was good and that his Financial ventures would be rewarded accordingly by
God. In chapter 2, "A Unitarian Tragedy," Herbert analyzes these false assump?
tions in terms of the man's character, most notably his largely unconscious
religious hypocrisy, his financial ventures and relationship with Peter
Gansevoort, and the effects of Financial disaster and death on Herman Melville.
Allan's fatal illusions and hypocritical use of liberal or Unitarian beliefs had
profound effects on his son.
The primary general effect was the opposition in Melville's mind between
respect for his father, particularly his manliness, and the Calvinist view that a sin?
ner's fate is revealed in the terror of his death. Since Calvinist attitudes on the
matter were dogmatically clear, the boy no doubt realized that in God's eyes his
father had been a sinner. This would have led Herman to feel "a personal hatred,
so deep as to seem innate, against the apparent inflictions of an inscrutable God"
(p. 61 ). Hatred and opposition are examined in chapter 3, "Child of the Devil," in
terms of conflicting Calvinist and liberal views of Allan's death, the family's
social fall, the mother's membership in the Dutch Reformed Church, and also the
ministry of Reverend Vermilye, a liberal Albany Calvinist, and Melville's YMCA
debates with the orthodox Charles van Loon. During the debates Melville dis?
covered the tactic of "the demonic," which, Herbert believes, enabled him at
various times in his career to attack the traditional order from within and seek
some kind of spiritual independence.
The writer's inability to Find a stable religious faith is illustrated by con?
tradictions appearing in early works. Chapter 4, "Same Madness," provides an
interesting discussion of logical discontinuities in "Hawthorne and His Mosses"
in preparation for a brief, somewhat sketchy survey of early works. Mardi shows
both an admiration for the religious felicity of Serenia and a recognition that it
avoids the problem of evil. Conflicting visions of a benevolent God and a
Calvinist God appear in Redburn and White-Jacket, both of which contain
portrayals of nightmare and evil, which for Melville could suggest a universe
ruled by hatred, but that view in White-Jacket is countered by the "democratic
spirit of Christianity" (p. 81). Melville's dissatisfaction with any such "solution,"
his attempts to Find answers within his own tradition, led of course to the writing
of Moby-Dick. Correspondence with Hawthorne and searches for meaning by
Melville and contemporary theologians Edward Beecher and J. M. Mathews are
examined to clarify Melville's radical approach within the orthodox beliefs of the
day. In Finding or considering answers others could not face, Melville himself es?
caped madness.
The remaining six chapters of Herbert's study deal with the various conflicts
as they appear in Moby-Dick, particularly in Ahab and Ishmael and a few others.
The discussions in chapter 5, "Ishmael as Spiritual Voyager," of the narrator's
early searches and Melville's satire of Calvinist and liberal frames of reference are
excellent. To place his examination of Ahab in perspective and to play up his
"grander heroism," Herbert provides an instructive contrast of the spiritual
heroisms of Father Mapple and Bulkington in chapter 6. While Mapple is himself
manly and presents a powerful sermon, the feminine virtue of submission is an
apparent implication of the doctrine he preaches. As the alternate discussions of
Ahab and Ishmael in the four remaining chapters cover rather familiar ground,
the insights tend to be sound rather than fresh. There are frequent good points,

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 REVIEW-ESSAY / 269

however. Discussions of Ahab's hatred and madness are penetrating. Chapter 9,

"Ahab Transfigured," shows Herbert's method to good advantage. Herbert
provides a carefully reasoned clarification of Calvinist views of the King Ahab
story, modern views of the relation between Melville's Ahab and King Ahab, and
the manner of Melville's inversion of the Biblical account. Acknowledging the in?
terpretations of Wright and Thompson, Herbert presents a more complex Ahab.
He explains that Ahab's struggle between the rational and mad reflects the
Calvinist, but that his decision in the Candles scene to worship the defiant side il?
lustrates a liberal view. The "monster God" was a major contention in the liberal
criticism of Calvinist beliefs. In becoming "a hero of the damned," Ahab himself
grows tyrannical, thereby illustrating W. W. Channing's attitude that if the
Calvinist God becomes a model for man, men would then turn into monsters.
While most studies stress Ahab or Ishmael, or contrast the two, Herbert
believes that each figure represents a different but allied response to the dis?
integration of Truth as a standard. The last two chapters on Ishmael illustrate
aspects ofthat relationship and particularly the growth of Ishmael's deeper skep?
ticism. Herbert's analysis of the five clusters of whiteness imagery in chapter 42 is
instructive, and the comment on whale symbolism illustrates the growth of
Ishmael's skepticism and Melville's own brilliant satires of Paley's "natural
theology," Unitarianism, and Calvinism. Ishmael eventually rejects Ahab's quest
in part because of its certainty, finds relative good in beauty, doubts the nature of
his own quest, and ends in heroic isolation. The concluding chapter provides in?
teresting if only partly convincing views of Melville's final stances of
"sophisticated polytheism," "polytheistic amoralism," and finally "fragmen?
tation," all of which left Melville at the end, Herbert explains, as alone as
Ishmael.
Herbert's book makes a valuable addition to the shelves of books on Moby
Dick and Melville's background. Yet, unavoidably, it gives the impression that
Melville was generally preoccupied with religious concerns and that the novel
deals largely with such matters. Its portrayal of the maturing Melville is therefore
incomplete, and its views of characters and situations in Moby-Dick are
sometimes simplistic. But since Herbert's intention is to concentrate on the
theological, that may indicate only that the study is at times highly specialized. It
also indicates that the definitive study of the topic is yet to appear; this one,
however, represents a very good start.
Although Melville's knowledge and use of mythology have been discussed in
many books and articles, G. M. Sweeney's Melville's Use of Classical Mythology
is the first thorough treatment of this traditional topic. If not profound or fre?
quently brilliant, the study is intelligent, well-written, and generally succeeds in
identifying "precisely the mythic character under discussion" and concentrating,
as many critics do not, Sweeney believes, "on the heroes Melville had in mind"
(p. 9). The only general limitation I find is a tendency to simplify the complex
characters and situations in terms of sources or mythical constructs.
Sweeney begins with an instructive chapter on Melville's knowledge of
mythology, aspects of his "classical allusiveness," and the three main influences
of Shakespeare's plays, a set of Harper's Classical Library, and friendship with
Hawthorne, all of which acted as catalysts in transforming Melville's myth mak?
ing powers. Four chapters deal with Moby-Dick, two with Pierre, and two with
the later fiction and "The Bell Tower." Three of the Moby-Dick chapters consider
mythical aspects of Ahab. The chief mythical influence is of course Prometheus.
In creating Ahab, Sweeney explains, Melville relied upon portrayals of
Prometheus by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, Burton in The Anatomy of

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 270 / REVIEW-ESSAY

Melancholy, and Bacon in The Wisdom of the Ancients. The classical influence
would appear most signiFicantly in Prometheus and Ahab as flawed sinners.
Ahab's chief crime?the attempt to kill the whale?is comparable to
Prometheus's theft of Fire. Both characters defy the gods; both are possessed by
hybris and madness; and each one has a mad counterpart, Lo or Pip, respectively,
who serves to illustrate the hero's personal qualities and warn him. With specific
references to play and novel, Sweeney states that the punishments visited on
Prometheus likely influenced the punishments and sufferings of Ahab. Bird
imagery, a recurring wound, and a descent to hell are factors in the punishments
of each. Sweeney's most perceptive views may be of Starbuck as chorus.
Influences of the Renaissance Prometheus and of Oedipus and Narcissus are
discussed in two chapters. Although Melville's knowledge of Burton's Anatomy is
well-known, Sweeney adds to our understanding of the extent ofthat influence,
particularly in shaping the melancholic in Moby-Dick. As Renaissance writers
would stress the "inner selF' in the determination of destiny, Melville, following
Burton's conception of Prometheus, shows Ahab as resembling "a Burtonian
case-history of the disease" (p. 59). "The Chart" chapter discloses parallels to
Burton in Ahab's tormented dream and melancholic character. Sweeney is on
fresher ground in discussions of Baconian influences on Ahab, who appears as an
"intense thinker," or, in Renaissance terms, "an alchemist" who employs magic
to manipulate people and possibly nature, and as a solitudinous man. Baconian
influences appear also, Sweeney believes, in Ahab's crime. His attack on the
whale may have been influenced by Melville's reading in the Harper's library of
Prometheus's attack on Zeus. Oedipean influences also appear. Lameness,
blindness, and intellectual pride link Oedipus and Ahab, who are likewise similar
in detachment and quickness to rage. They differ chiefly in that Oedipus gains
self-knowledge, but Ahab, Sweeney argues, does not. Ahab resembles Narcissus
in that both suffer from self-delusion. Although all such points are relevant, they
add little to our understanding of Ahab's depth, and at times seem to question
that depth.
The two chapters on Pierre cover somewhat familiar mythological ground,
but they provide a more particularized focus and commentary than has yet ap?
peared. Pierre is not a "false Prometheus," or a changed Prometheus, as some
have claimed, but "insofar as Pierre is a Prometheus, he is a true Prometheus" (p.
100). Sweeney contends persuasively that Pierre, unlike Ahab, is primarily a
Renaissance figure, without the stark and grand qualities of the Grecian Figures,
and that the Prometheus myth is not the central myth but that of Orestes is.
Familiar with versions of the Orestes myth by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Goethe,
Melville relied principally, however, on Euripides' Orestes. The reliance was
seemingly pervasive, for many parallels appear between the House of Atreus and
Glendenning, various family members, and actions. If parallels between dead
fathers and sons appear commonplace, Sweeney provides fresh insights into ties
between Clytemnestra and Mrs. Glendenning; Electra, Iphigenia, and Isabel; and
also between various oracles in plays and novel, and actions and fates driving the
two heroes, one to exoneration, the other to suicide.
In most Fiction after Pierre, Sweeney explains, the heroes and antagonists
take on qualities of the crafty Odysseus rather than of the tragic Prometheus. A
few "distant cousins of Ahab . . . pitifully diminished" (p. 147) appear in The
Confidence-Man and Clarel, but nihilistic views are not conducive to the
portrayal of heroic Figures. The one exception, Sweeney believes, is Bannadonna,
whose construction of tower and bell evinces an Ahabean pride, arrogance, and
intellectuality and who shows ties not only to Ahab's machine-man in the
carpenter chapter but to the Baconian Prometheus and also to Hawthorne's tale,
"The Minotaur."

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 REVIEW-ESSAY / 271

Melville's sixteen stories written between 1853 and 1856 have been receiving
much attention in recent years. Articles on them appear frequently, and R. Bruce
Bickley's Method of Melville's Short Fiction (reviewed by D. Yannella in Studies
in the Novel, Summer 1976) offers helpful analyses of stories and influences. The
only previous book-length study in English is Richard Harter Fogle's excellent
Melville's Shorter Tales, 1960. Two such studies appeared in 1977: William B.
Dillingham's Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856', and Marvin Fisher's Going
Under: Melville's Short Fiction and the American 1850s.
Dillingham's study is very impressive. It is the most scholarly and profound
examination of the stories to date and likely the most wide-ranging as well. The
purposes are several. The chief one is to analyze stories that satisfied the conserv?
ative tastes of editors at Harper's and Putnam's, which published fourteen, and
that, at the same time, relying on "concealment and artistic experimentation" (p.
7), expressed Melville's criticisms of man and the American scene. Dillingham
proposes also to show that the stories were generally conceived in pairs and that
they contain references to the contemporary scene and to Melville himself.
In these respects and others, Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856 proves to be
consistently illuminating. Each of the fourteen chapters illustrates Melville's use
of contemporary materials and likely biographical ties. The scholarship in these
areas is exemplary, as it is also in the knowledgeable surveys of extant criticism
for each story. The emphases though are upon individual stories, and to a limited
extent their pairings, and are frequently brilliant and original. The best are of
"counterstories," which customarily have been studied separately but which Dil?
lingham shows are related. Counterstories share a complex idea or situation but
show different emphases, as in the case of "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Cock-A
Doodle-Doo!" Chapter 1 clarifies the relationship of the two in terms of the nar?
rator, the primary topic of fear, and Bartleby and Merrymusk. The concentration
in each chapter, however, is on the one story. That on "Bartleby" is excellent.
Consumed by conscious and unconscious fears of life and death, the lawyer
narrator relies on various defenses, particularly "unconscious duplicity" and
rationalization, which are analyzed in five parts of the story. The narrator's
defenses enable him to cope with life, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger, but not of
course with Bartleby, who is regarded as fearless and honest. Dillingham's discus?
sions of such matters include revealing comments on food and money imagery,
concentric circles of characters, and the Adams-Colt references. Dillingham
shows in chapter 2 that while the narrator of "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" possesses
strong fears of emasculation, scorn, and death, he eventually comes to terms with
them. The freshest insights are of the influences of Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy upon the portrayal of the narrator and his relationship with Mer?
rymusk, from whom he learns to glorify self, gain a kind of salvation, and face up
to the fear of death.
The remaining chapters, of varying lengths and emphases, appear similarly
acute and scholarly. Several illustrate Dillingham's other pairing of stories: the
"bipartite" stories, a term Dillingham prefers to Leyda's "diptych," which he ex?
plains suggests the ecclesiastic and too great a separation between stories. These
pairings are good though less original than the counterstory alignments. The in?
dividual essays themselves, however, contain many new or fresh insights. "The
Two Temples" is shown to have significant links to both Moby-Dick and 77?^
Confidence-M an. The study of "The Happy Failure" and "The Fiddler" includes
new evidence on the original of the fiddler, and presents Helmstone as the
protagonist. "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs" is regarded as a
story of language in which Blandmour's bright, optimistic words and the guide's
civic labels, unlike the narrator's ironies, are clearly false. Dillingham provides

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272 / REVIEW-ESSAY

impressive biographical and critical evidence for his contention that of all the
Melville narrators this one comes closest to the author in character and attitudes.
Other stories receive thorough, detailed attention in Dillingham's book.
Narrators, antagonists, and biographical materials are main focuses in "The
Lightning-Rod Man" and "I and My Chimney." The narrator of the first is not a
reasonable man, but another deFiant Melville hero, and the second narrator is not
a Melville spokesman or projection of the author but a personable, prudential
man resembling the lawyer-narrator of "Bartleby." That Dillingham's scholarly
abilities match his critical acumen is shown again in probing accounts, in "The
Apple-Tree Table" commentary, of versions of the bug story, the incident involv?
ing the Fox sisters, and an 1853 lecturer on spiritualism that, Dillingham believes,
may have influenced attitudes in the story. Dillingham is one of few critics dis?
tinguishing, and rightly so in my opinion, between families and narrators in "I
and My Chimney" and "The Apple-Tree Table." I doubt though that the nar?
rator of the First is as weak as indicated.
Present and future studies of "Benito Cere?o" will have to take Dillingham's
essay into account. It is quite possibly the best ever written on the story. Believing
that "Benito Cere?o" stresses not contrast as many critics claim but similitude,
Dillingham analyzes the multiple point of view, main characters, and also four
areas of human existence as conveyed by the authorial point of view: physical set?
ting, freedom, experience, and religion. If this is to make the discussion seem
categoric or mechanical, it is far from either. Explanations of circle, eye, and
stage imagery, for example, are complex, but enlightening. Circularity and
similarity are dominant factors in the vision portraying the four areas. Things on
the San Dominick resemble those on land; freedom and slavery are not distinct.
Babo, who was a slave, is a master who must act the slave. The San Dominick is
both a monastery and a house, a symbol of both "Christian devotion" and of
"darkness and death" (p. 238). Dillingham's interpretations of points of view?
reportorial, official, authorial, and individual?brilliantly illuminate characters,
roles, and visions and also Figurative language and the story's unity. Babo, whose
role resembles Bannadonna's, is not moved so much by "malignancy ... as
archmisanthropy" (p. 264). One source of Babo's characterization is Milton's
Satan. The story itself is not primarily about evil but about fear. My only reserva?
tion, a mild one at that, is that Dillingham's imaginative and elaborate parable of
the story as a portrayal of two ship captains, Bachelor and Dominick, reflecting
Melville's fears, necessarily misses subtleties of both complex writer and
profound story.
The central thesis of Marvin Fisher's Going Under: Melville's Short Fiction
and the 1850s appears somewhat similar to Dillingham's. In order to express un?
acceptable views of life and the American scene, Melville chose the "indirection
of symbolism, allusion, and analogy . . . to go under as a literary strategy" (p. xii).
Like Dillingham, Fisher Finds in the stories "notable examples of advanced or ex?
perimental narrative, attempts at innovative symbolism, and frequently
penetrating efforts to deFine and evaluate American manners, institutions, and
ways of thought" (pp. ix-x). Stating in the preface that his approach is more
thematic than chronological, Fisher lists seven themes appearing in the essays,
several of which were previously published. The themes include "innocence and
experience . . . contrasts between America and Europe . . . freedom and ser?
vitude" (p. xi), and the like.
Fisher's First chapter, "Portrait of the Artist in America," contends that
"Hawthorne and His Mosses" is both Melville's First published short Fiction and
an expression of techniques and aims in the Fiction. The essay allows Melville to

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 REVIEW-ESSAY / 273

appear as "a quasi-fictitious narrator" and tell about himself and Hawthorne as
historical figures and "characters in a dramatic version of cultural mythology"
(p. 2). Fisher draws in part from a 1968 essay by John Seelye, but makes his own
case. Melville regards both Hawthorne and Shakespeare as antiestablishment
writers, and places himself in their company. The Melville essay foreshadows
stories, Fisher explains, for it employs "rather astonishing techniques," and "an
overriding concern with the condition of American culture, the role of the artist
in that culture, and associated themes of aesthetic, social, and spiritual conse?
quence" (p. 12).
In each remaining chapter, Fisher analyzes one or a few stories in detail,
relating each to dominant themes or topics. Though the scholarship is not as
searching and thorough as Dillingham's and the discoveries are few, it is pertinent
and helpful. Fisher discusses "The Piazza" first because he believes that it was
written to introduce themes and techniques of five stories published previously.
The story shows the narrator as quester and point of view as theme as well as
technique. After changing perspective the narrator loses original views of the
beautiful landscape and returns to the piazza sadder but wiser, retaining faith in
only the imagination's power to change perspective. Fisher provides interesting
comparisons of the story and Hawthorne's "Old Manse."
Chapter 3, "A Pisgah View of Old World and New," includes discussions of
three diptych stories, "The Two Temples," "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich
Man's Crumbs," and "The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tarturus of Old
Maids," which show contrasting panels of old world and new. The examination
of "The Two Temples" contains little that is different except for perceptive com?
ments on Melville's use of an epiphanic technique in each half. While regarding
the narrator of "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs" as sensitive and
intelligent, Fisher believes that in not speaking to the Squire or by doing nothing
in London the narrator becomes "something of a cop-out" (p. 70). The analysis
of "Paradise" and "Tarturus" depends more on direct contrast and comparison
of themes and strategies in the two stories. Both record failures of ideal and
origins in Melville's background, and show similar beginnings and patterns of
imagery. But Fisher's main interest is the second half, which he believes is "a tale
more horrifying than any of Poe's" (p. 79). Color and phallic imagery of nature,
horse, and machine points to the violation of nature and the mechanization of the
creative forces of life.
Generally, Fisher's accounts of such violations and mechanizations and of
other cultural excesses of mid nineteenth-century America appear sound. Social
and religious targets of Melville's midcentury criticisms are sharply delineated.
The discussions, for example, in chapter 4, "Truth Comes in with Darkness," of
dehumanizing conditions, industrialism, and slavery, place "The Bell-Tower"
and "Benito Cere?o" firmly in historical context and clarify why readers then
missed the satire. Under the cover of comic satire in "The Lightning-Rod Man,"
Melville attacks the alignment of Calvinist thunderation and scientific
technology, and looks ahead to The Confidence-Man. "The Apple-Tree Table,"
also a "covertly comic, covertly defiant story" (p. 124), receives careful attention
with excellent comments on imagery, low comedy, and the contention that the
germ of the story appears in a butterfly and larva reference in chapter 69 of
Mardi. For Fisher, "Jimmy Rose" is a subtle revelation of the low state of
Christianity in the country: the church is weak and the materialist society is only
barely tolerant. Fisher is very good on the house, particularly the rose imagery,
and on the character and symbolism of Jimmy Rose. Had they known, readers
then would have not taken kindly to hidden criticisms in "The Happy Fiddler" of
the standardizations of creativity or to criticisms in "I and My Chimney" of
slavery and the "house divided" (p. 202).

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274 / REVIEW-ESSAY

Going Under contains useful information on the cultural scene of the 1850s
and many excellent insights into Melville's techniques and strategies of "going
under," but the thematic progression or development is sometimes vague. The
seven themes listed in the preface are not clearly related to themes or topics in the
seven chapters. The unity tends to be mechanical: on that level, it is adequately
clear. But the study lacks the firm sense of organic continuity and chronology of
Dillingham's study. In other respects, however, Going Under is valuable.
Two other recent books offer interpretations of genre and structure in
Melville's novels. Richard H. Brodhead's Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel
provides the first detailed comparison of novels of the 1850-1852 years which saw
a confluence of careers and a "wonderful welling up of creative energy . . . chan?
neled into the production of novels . . . and which significantly realizes and ex?
tends the potentialities ofthat genre" (p. 2). The book has four parts: one on the
two writers and "the forms of the novel," one on each writer, and a conclusion.
My comments will be directed primarily to Brodhead's readings of Melville.
The works considered in "Hawthorne, Melville, and the Form of the Novel"
are The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance,
Moby-Dick, and Pierre. These according to Brodhead, show a dual quality: a
commitment to temporal narrative and attempts to circumvent that through
short narrative forms, epiphanies, and other variations of novel sequence. In the
1850-1852 period Hawthorne and Melville wrote mixed novels in which different
fictional modes presented different visions of reality and in which visions are less
important than the minds or mental activity creating them. Brodhead is epecially
good in placing novels and modes in the context of contemporary English fiction
or in the imaginative approaches of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Cervantes, and in
drawing comparisons of general strategies in the five novels. There are perceptive
comparisons of the fictions and frequently subtle insights into the imaginations
behind them. The generic ground for each writer has been covered by various
other critics who generally do little, however, with comparisons of these
strategies. At the same time, too, Brodhead rightly challenges the traditional dis?
tinctions made by Chase and others between the novel and romance forms.
There are three essays on Melville and his fiction. "The Art of the Diver" ex?
amines in detail Melville's love of philosophizing as shown in letters, Moby-Dick,
and the commitment to unfolding his vision that "makes his works such special
cases within the general context of the novel" (p. 125). Brodhead provides
thoughtful, brief readings of Mardi, The Confidence-M an, and Billy Budd to il?
lustrate these various points. "The Uncommon Long Cable: Moby-Dick" is a
fresh consideration of different patterns and visions of reality in that work.
Believing that strangeness is the main quality of the inscrutable Melvillean world,
Brodhead provides a sensitive reading of Ishmael's fears and anxieties in the early
chapters and Ahab's sense of the supernatural. Brodhead's main contribution lies
in precise descriptions of the different worlds or realities o? Moby-Dick, whether
supernatural and everyday, their distinctive rhythms and meanings, and Mel?
ville's playing of one against the other. While Arvin, Bezanson, and Berthoff have
studied the fictional modes and themes more deeply and Brodtkorb has written
an original and lengthy phenomenological reading of Moby-Dick, Brodhead
provides a brilliant, calm overall look, for example, at Ishmael's awareness of
these worlds, his working back and forth between them, and of ways to read the
novel. Brodhead does not strain his points except rarely as in the opinion that it is
almost impossible to visualize Ahab and Stubb standing together because they
come from or represent different kinds of reality.
In "The Fate of Candor" Brodhead regards Pierre as one with Moby-Dick
because it shows Melville's continued "experiment at evolving a fictional shape"

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 REVIEW-ESSAY / 275

(p. 165). Some discussions of ties or contrasts between Ahab and Pierre and of
Pierre's early predicament appear familiar. Views of Melville's use of romantic
stereotypes in order to portray psychic qualities are more cogent. Brodhead
believes that the failures of Pierre rise from problems in Melville's imaginative
approach and not in external pressures. This familiar view runs counter to
evidence in recent studies that such pressures account for changes after the Saddle
Meadows part. While Fictional practices in The Scarlet Letter and The House of
the Seven Gables undoubtedly influenced Melville in writing Pierre, it is
questionable that for the novel "Melville . . . mastered . . . Hawthorne's delicately
meticulous art of analysis" (p. 176). Melville's portrayal in Pierre of thought
processes, the working of a mind, and in particular searches into the unconscious,
would seem to be in good measure his own: the consequences of introspections
before and during composition of Pierre. More convincing are Brodhead's assess?
ments of the looser forms in the last part of Pierre. The comparison of similarities
between Pierre and The Blithedale Romance, both published in 1852, is a superb
illustration of Brodhead's approach and excellent in itself.
As Brodhead's often brilliant survey of similarities and influences in Fiction
by Hawthorne and Melville is by nature severely restricted, it leaves one wonder?
ing about the years following. Melville's stories and The Confidence-M an had ap?
peared by 1857 and Hawthorne's Marble Faun in 1860. Could comparable com?
parisons be made of these?
Another recent study providing overall views of Melville's Fiction, and, in
this instance, of other Fiction as well, is William C. Spengemann's Adventurous
Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789-1900. This impressive, wide-ranging
book considers the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James as in?
fluenced by "the poetics of adventure" and "the poetics of domesticity." The long
chapter on each poetics is carefully reasoned and scholarly. For the First,
Spengemann examines travel literature by Medieval, Renaissance, and New
World writers to show the development of both traditional travel writing in which
the narrator is presumably objective, or more or less separate from his accounts,
and the newer romantic writing in which the narrator becomes subjective and dis?
covers truth as he goes along. Richard Dana's Two Years before the Mast il?
lustrates the latter. The more recognizable "poetics of domesticity," minimizing
change and conflict and developing largely in England, is represented by sen?
timental, picaresque, Gothic, and historic lines. Spengemann's thesis is that
American Fiction of the 1789-1900 period represents a coming together or a con?
flicting of the two poetics or elements of them. After two excellent chapters on
Royall Tyler's Algerine Captive and Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym as harbingers of the
new romantic Fiction and on Hawthorne's fiction and its indebtedness to both
poetics, Spengemann turns to Melville.
Stating that "Melville's career affords us an unprecedented opportunity to
follow the modulations from travel-writing to Romantic fiction in the work of
one author" (p. 178), Spengemann examines such modulations in detail in Typee,
Moby-Dick, and Pierre, and comments briefly on The Confidence-M an, Mardi,
and Billy Budd to fill in the picture. Typee is regarded as especially significant, for
in writing it Melville "became the man who would eventually have to write Moby
Dick" (p. 188). Spengemann explains that although Melville began the novel as a
personal account he gradually became more interested in creating a fictional
character. Other critics have found a separation between character and narrator
in the novel. Spengemann's is vital in that the relationship of character and nar?
rator is a factor in a poetics of Fiction. Thus, Tommo, initially mimetic, gradually
becomes a romantic who, differing with the narrator's favorable assessments of
Typees, finds truth in his own experiences and is fated by them. As a romantic

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276 / REVIEW-ESSAY

figure he would presumably accept his fate and remain on the island. But at this
point, Spengemann explains, Melville substitutes the mimetic Tommo who pat?
terned after the narrator-author escapes as he did. The romantic Tommo and the
man Melville became in writing Typee remain.
The main contribution of Spengemann's book for the student of Melville
may well be the generally enlightening way in which Melville's later works are
shown to follow generically from aspects of Typee and the poetics of adventure
and domesticity. Comment on Moby-Dick illustrates the fine points of Melville's
profound handling of the travel-adventure form. Some familiar points are sen?
sitively discussed: the narrator's consciousness and journey metaphor holding the
novel together; the shifting in modes and consciousness after chapter 29. One or
two points appear challengeable. Like Tommo both mimetic and romantic,
Ishmael is regarded as essentially unable to learn from experience, that is, risk his
essential self for sake of learning. It is difficult to regard Ishmael in this light, for
he is aware of a darker side and expresses a cosmic nothingness in chapter 42.
Otherwise, Spengemann is convincing. Ahab creates his own world, and is willing
to sacrifice it in his journey beyond the wall. In describing experience through the
guise of his own characters, Melville, seeking absolute truth, came to realize that
truth is contingent upon experience and that writing itself makes its own truths.
Following Feidelson's views of symbolistic esthetics in Moby-Dick,
Spengemann regards the novel as a "turning point in the history of American
literature" (p. 198) in that thereafter, partly as a result of Moby-Dick, one line of
American literature accepted the absence of absolutes and led to fiction not based
on them. Thereafter, too, each Melville novel considered the problem of belief
and usually in a different way. Representing one such an attempt, Pierre marks
Melville's farewell to the travel-form, carries the symbolism theories to various
conclusions, and leads eventually to Billy Budd. Spengemann's contribution
herein, as in the Moby-Dick comment, lies largely in his generally fresh realign?
ment of new and familiar views of the novel. Pierre "begins as a Domestic
Romance, becomes a Romantic narrative along about Book II, and ends up as an
ambiguous, self-reflecting symbolist document" (p. 201). That is, the novel is not
a Domestic Romance but an autobiographical narrative in which the distance
between the narrator's skepticism and the character's idealism gradually
diminishes until the narrator becomes an explorer of Pierre's life and Pierre
becomes an inward adventurer who writes a novel "exactly like the one Melville is
writing" (p. 206). Acknowledging Raymond Nelson's 1970 article on the topic,
Spengemann explains that Pierre's exploration of the inner life is accompanied by
statements on symbolist writing and that Melville's exploration of that explora?
tion reveals his own search for truth. In subsequent fiction, finding no overall vi?
sion, Melville turns to shorter forms, their various visions, and again to the view
that the "meaning . . . [is] inseparable from the art that creates it" (p. 210). In this
light Billy Budd becomes a tragic allegory with Vere representing Melville's
course from Ahab's "howling infinite" to the "lee shore of . . . [the] finite, con?
tingent self (p. 201).
While these six studies return us to somewhat more conventional topics and
treatments in Melville criticism, they do so with much evidence of dedicated in?
terest and enlightened methods and attitudes. That is to say, too, that they are far
from being uniformly or persistently conventional or traditional. Most draw in
various ways upon psychological, cultural, or philosophic approaches and there?
by add to earlier valuable insights into the writer's sensibility, his novels, and his
stories. These books are reassuring in their quality of literary and biographical ex?
plication and also in their generally high level of scholarship, an area not

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 REVIEW-ESSAY / 277

scrupulously tended to in some recent studies. These considered here appear sen?
sitive not only to matters of accuracy and thoroughness but to another scholarly
and critical need sometimes overlooked: the need to provide a sense of both the
man and his work. These studies, with occasional exceptions, do well in both
respects.

KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY

NOTES

1 T. Walter Herbert, Jr. Mobv-Dick and Calvinism: A World Dismantled (New Brunswick:
Rutgers Univ. Press, 1977)'. xxii + 186 pp. $12.50.

Gerald M. Sweeney. Melville's Use of Classical Mythology (Amsterdam: Rudopi N. V.,

1975). 162 pp. $10.00.

William B. Dillingham. Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856 (Athens: The Univ. of

Georgia Press, 1977). 390 pp. $16.50.

Marvin Fisher. Going Under: Melville's Short Fiction and The American 1850s (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977). xxii + 216 pp. $12.50.

Richard H. Brodhead. Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel (Chicago: The Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1976). vii + 216 pp. $11.50.

William C. Spengemann. 77?? Adventurous Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789
1900 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977). lx + 290 pp, $15.00.

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