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Much of the current critical literature on Moby-Dick lacks a unifying focus. This essay attempts to provide a thread of continuity for Moby-Dick by proving that paradox and Herman Melville’s anticipation of the early existential movement hold the key to a full reading of this text. By viewing the text itself, Melville’s personal correspondence, and the writings of Emerson, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, the paradoxical tension by which this text must be read comes into clearer focus. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. / "May 2006." / Includes bibliographic references (leaves 32-35)

This thesis examines the wonder and the terror of the sea as it is evident in Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick. The examined characters stand in wonder or terror of the sea, or images of the wonderful and terrifying sea reveal characteristics of these sailors. Definitions, the views of the critics, and Ishmael's observations comprise chapter one. The common sailors (Bulkington, Fleece, Perth, the carpenter, the Manxman, and the boy Pip) make up chapter two. Chapter three consists of the four pagan harpooners (Daggoo, Tashtego, Queequeg, and Fedallah). The three mates (Flask, Stubb, and Starbuck) comprise chapter four. The thesis does not examine captain Ahab or Ishmael as each alone is material for a thesis.

Graduation date: 2002

Ce mémoire étudie la façon dont Herman Melville élève la baleine blanche au rang d'une Idée platonicienne, faisant d'elle la métaphore de la mort. Sous le prisme du Phédon de Platon et de La mort de Jankélévitch, nous analysons le roman comme une allégorie, longue réflexion sur le rôle de la littérature et de la mémoire pour parvenir à transcender la mort. Si Achab est condamné dès le début à errer sur l'océan dans une quête métaphysique à la recherche de la Vérité, c'est finalement Ishmael qui, en devenant narrateur, parvient à survire au désastre. Unique rescapé, c'est parce qu'il a côtoyé la mort de près qu'il peut la faire entrer dans le récit et ainsi raconter l'inénarrable.

This dissertation examines the problem of women, marriage, and sexuality in Melville's work. The general absence of female characters in his stories, his frequent depiction of horrific marriages, and his seeming reticence about sexuality have all contributed to the long-standing critical view that his writing reveals a deep-seated hatred and fear of women. In disputing these critical commonplaces, the study argues that Melville always reinforces the importance of the sexual element in human relations. His ideas about women, marriage, and sexuality are informed by his perception of a disturbing tension between men and women in his society, and he makes the paradoxes of his culture concerning gender relations central to his work. The dissertation is organized thematically to isolate and explore the primary manifestations of sexualized human relations in Melville's work: desire, frustration, marriage, transgression, and homoeroticism. Close readings of specific stories, poems, and sections of novels suggest new interpretative trajectories based primarily on considerations of how culture influences gender and sexual meaning. The introduction surveys the tradition of Melville scholarship on the problem of women and sexuality. The sources of the prevailing negative impression concerning his attitudes are traced largely to the demands of the theoretical approaches which have dominated discussion of the sexual issues in Melville's writing. Evidence from Melville's marginalia is then offered to establish the ground for a more balanced view of his perceptions. The second chapter asserts that, for Melville, much of the difficulty of human experience can be attributed to sexual desire. Within his work he probes the psychological nature of these desires, and he interrogates the cultural codes by which desire is regulated. The next chapter, on the marriage theme, locates Melville within the nineteenth century turmoil in marriage ideologies, while chapter four is an analysis of the sexual transgression motif. The violation of cultural rules through which sexual pleasure is licensed and controlled is used metaphorically by Melville to represent the individual quest for personal or artistic freedom. The final chapter describes Melville's consistent use of figurative language associated with negative homoeroticism to dramatize disproportionate power relations between men.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 234-240). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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Myth in the Novels of Herman Melville: A Study of the Functions of the Myths of Eden, the Golden Age, and Hero and Dragon in Three Novels of Herman Melville--Typee, Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd, Sailor. In Typee, Melville evokes myths of Eden and the Golden Age to present a critique of civilization. This thesis focusses on the presence and function of contrasting elements of these myths--Eden and the Fallen World, the Golden Age and Age of Iron--in the novel. These myths facilitate assessment of civilization, and heighten the significance of Tom and Toby's escape from the Dolly and their longings for the island's delights. These myths also link the primitive Typees and the Dolly's sailors, and enhance the significance of the young sailors escape from Typee. In Moby-Dick, Melville again presents a critique of civilization, again exploiting contrasting elements of the Eden myth. This myth provides an interpretative framework for specific sets of contrasting symbols (some encountered in Typee), and for the contrasted fates of Ahab and Ishmael--fates made possible owing to Melville's conception of human nature, in Moby-Dick more complex than in Typee. Melville exploits further mythical material in investigating man's confrontation with evil. The prediction in Genesis of enmity between the "seed" of Eve and the Serpent serves several functions: it illuminates Ahab's sense of Moby Dick as Evil incarnate and Ahab's consequent adoption of a mythical role in hunting Moby Dick, while Christian interpretation of the prediction affords grounds for an ironic judgement of Ahab. Allusions to myths of Hero and Dragon encourage the reader to assess critically Ahab, Moby Dick, and the hunt. In Billy Budd, Sailor, the bipartite structure of the novel determines a use of myth in the first part different from that in the second. In the first part, Melville coalesces an element of the Eden myth--the confrontation of Adam and the Serpent--with the outcome of the confrontations in the myths of Hero and Dragon. In the second part, the expectations raised by the patterning of this composite myth are dashed, thereby exacerbating the poignancy of Billy's fate. The Eden myth also provides an interpretative framework for specific sets of contrasting symbols, thereby enabling Melville to present a critique of civilization--a study of man's condition in the Fallen World. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1984.