Zugl.: Göteborg, University, Diss., 2001.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on Dec. 1, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1959. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 679-685).

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät IV--Universität Regensburg, 1997. / Bibliogr. p. 387-402.

Th.--Litt. am.--Paris 8, 1986.

Incidents of violence abound in most of the novels and short stories of Herman Melville, and in several of them, especially Billy Budd, the protagonist is characterized in terms of his attitude towards violence. The central contention of my thesis is that in the development of Melville's fiction from Moby-Dick to Billy Budd the thematic role of violence changes from that of a destructive to a more redemptive force. This change parallels another change that takes place in his fiction, from a focus on the individual who is destroyed by his commitment to violence, to the society which is temporarily purged of evil through the violent act of an individual. In my first two chapters I discuss Moby-Dick and Pierre as representing Melville's early attitude to violence. In Moby-Dick violence is associated primarily with Ahab, whose characterization takes up about half of the novel. In Pierre violence becomes a more central motif, simply because Pierre is the only major character in the novel, and consequently his involvement with violence reflects the focus of the novel as a whole. Both of these novels employ the theme of violence mainly to dramatize the separation of the self from society. In chapters three and four I discuss the ways in which "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno" prefigure the role of violence in Billy Budd. The fact that even, the timid lawyer is capable of feeling the faint stirrings of anger within him anticipates the concern of Billy Budd with the universality of human emotion, and its important role in helping to redeem an excessively rationalistic society. “Benito Cereno" also looks toward Billy Budd, in that Cereno's magnanimous concern for Delano's safety, which gives him the strength to break away from Babo's influence and jump into the boat, prefigures Billy's magnaminity at his execution. In my final chapter I discuss the way in which the destructive violence and a focus on the fate of the individual in Moby-Dick has been replaced by the socially redemptive violence and a focus on the fate of society in Billy Budd. Melville's development in this respect may be measured by his transformation of murder into a socially desirable act. Billy destroys evil and is in turn destroyed by the society which he protects, yet his influence lives in the hearts of the sailors who have known him. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (M.A.)--Youngstown State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-140). Also available via the World Wide Web in PDF format.

Thesis (M.A.)--Dalhousie University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives.