Ungraspable Phantom

John Bryant; Mary K. Bercaw Edwards; Timothy Marr

Description

A collection of essays presented at the sesquicentenary Moby-Dick conferenceThe twenty-one essays collected in "Ungraspable Phantom" are from an international conference held in 2001 celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick. The essays reflect not only a range of problems and approaches but also the cosmopolitan perspective of international scholarship. They offer new thoughts on familiar topics: the novel's problematic structure, its sources in and reinvention of the Bible, its Lacanian and post-Freudian psychology, and its rhetoric. They also present fresh information on new areas of interest: Melville's creative process, law and jurisprudence, Freemasonry and labor, race, Latin Americanism, and the Native American.Scholars, students, and readers of Moby-Dick will find this collection of essays fresh and insightful.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Reino Unido
• Ireland
• United Kingdom
• Science fiction
• Stephen Ireland
• Great Britain
• Fantasy
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631010316
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

,

Edited by John Bryant,

Mary K. Bercaw

Edwards, and Timothy Marr

“Ungraspable Phantom” Essays onMobyDick

“Ungraspable Phantom”

“Ungraspable Phantom”

Essays onMobyDick

K

L

e d i t e d b y John Bryant, Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, and Timothy Marr

t h e k e n t s t a t e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s k e n t , o h i o

©by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio all rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number -: --- -: ---- Manufactured in the United States of America





“ComposingMobyDick:What Might Have Happened: The Astman Distinguished Lecture” is fromThe Creationistsby E. L. Doctorow, ©by E. L. Doctorow. Used by persmission of Random House, Inc.

library of congress cataloginginpublication data Ungraspable phantom : essays on MobyDick / edited by John Bryant, Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, and Timothy Marr. p. cm. Consists of a selection of revised pages presented at the interdisciplinary conference, MobyDick, held Oct.–,at Hofstra University. The conference was cosponsored by the Melville Society.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

-: ----(pbk. : alk. paper)∞

-: ---(pbk. : alk. paper)∞ . Melville, Herman,–. MobyDick—Congresses.. Sea stories, American— History and criticism—Congresses.. Whaling in literature—Congresses.. Whales in literature—Congresses. I. Bryant, John,– II. Edwards, Mary K. Bercaw. III. Marr, Timothy,– IV. Melville Society. ps2384.m6u65 '.—dc

British Library CataloginginPublication data are available.

Contents

Preface: “To Fight Some Other World”  john bryant

Introduction: Renderings of the Whale  mary k. bercaw edwards and timothy marr

ConstructingMobyDick:Breakdown and Redemption  ComposingMobyDick:What Might Have Happened:  The Astman Distinguished Lecture  e. l. doctorow  “Ungainly Gambols” and Circumnavigating the Truth:  Breaking the Narrative ofMobyDick  lori n. howard  “Chiefly Known by His Rod”:  The Book of Jonah, Mapple’s Sermon, and Scapegoating  giorgio mariani

Man, Mind, Whale  Filling the Void: A Lacanian Angle of Vision onMobyDick  dennis williams

ix

15

25

37

61

1

Melville,MobyDick,and the Depressive Mind: Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask as Symbolic Charaters  wendy stallard flory

Correspondences: Paranoiac Lexicographers and Melvillean Heroes  sanford e. marovitz

MobyDickand Law  “Deadly Voids and Unbidden Infidelities”:  Death, Memory, and Law inMobyDick  john t. matteson  “I Stand Alone Here upon an Open Sea”:  Starbuck and the Limits of Positive Law  kathryn mudgett

Reading and Mapping

81

100

117

132

 Morality and Rhetoric inMobyDick  michael kearns 147 MobyDick’s Lessons, or How Reading Might Save One’s Life  carol colatrella 165  Mapping and Measurement inMobyDick  anne baker 182 FloodGates of the Wonder World: Race and the Americas  “In This Simple Savage Old Rules Would Not Apply”:  Cetology and the Subject of Race inMobyDick  mark k. burns 199  “Kings of the UpsideDown World”:  Challenging White Hegemony inMobyDick  susan garbarini fanning 209  “So Spanishly Poetic”:MobyDick’s Doubloon and  Latin America  rodrigo j. lazo 224

vi Contents

Dreaming a Dream of Interracial Bonds: FromHope LeslietoMobyDick  yukiko oshima

Very Like a Whale:MobyDickin Translation  “There’s another rendering now”:  On TranslatingMobyDickinto German  daniel göske  The Brazilian Whale  irene hirsch

Modern Breachings:MobyDickon Stage and Web  Leviathanic Revelations: Laurie Anderson’s, Rinde Eckert’s,  and John Barrymore’sMoby Dicks  samuel otter  FeminizingMobyDick:Contemporary Women  Perform the Whale  elizabeth schultz  Fusing with the Muse: Eckert’sGreat Whalesas Homage  and Prophecy  robert k. wallace  “Lying in Various Attitudes”: Staging Melville’s Pip in  Digital Media  wyn kelley

General Works Cited

Index

238

255

274

291

305

321

337





Contentsvii

Preface

“To Fight Some Other World”

j o h n b rya n t

ately, when thinking aboutMobyDick—and having nothing else in L particular to interest me on shore, I keep Melville’s novel in mind a great deal—Ifind myself dwelling on the“hug.”I do not mean to suggest that the novelfills me with such exhilaration and warmth that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately embracing thefirst person I meet on the street. Of course, like many readers—including artists, scholars, and critics—I love this book and readily admit to moments of stunned awe in reading passages in the book and to having shared them in classrooms, at home, and once or twice with strangers on the street; I have even participated in marathon readings ofMobyDickalong with other blearyeyed compan ions, up all night reading their assigned chapters out loud, hopped up on Melville’s jazz. I will admit to having hugged a Melville reader in fellowship now and again. But, in fact,MobyDickis also a hard read, at times infuriating, frightening, indeed alienating; and the enthused, celebratory hug of mutual selfcontentment you might expect me to offer in a preface like this to a book of essays celebrating the sesquicentennial ofMobyDickis not at all the hug I am thinking of when Ifind myself thinking aboutMobyDick.  The hug I am thinking of is above all a physical act, which is not at all what one might think is central to a book that is so famously metaphysical, one that ventures beyond materiality. But, of course, the search for something spiritual, essential, ideal “beyond” our physical realm—what Melville calls the “ungraspable phantom of life,” or more bravely and weirdly the extracted essence called “sperm”—occurs within, not beyond. It happens very much here and now, mixed within the stuffof nature and in our contemplation of the dull thud we hear and feel as we continuallyfind ourselves running

ix