Herman Melville’s final novel The Confidence-Man destabilizes conventional Western models of ethical behavior, particularly Kantian notions of moral agency, by exposing and challenging their basis in rationality and a progressivist model of history. The Confidence-Man shows rationality to be nothing more than one way, among many other possible ways, that human beings attempt to fix the world in their understanding and justify their moral choices. I use these insights from The Confidence-Man to illuminate Melville’s opposition to the missionaries’ work of civilizing and Christianizing the South Seas islanders in his earlier travelogues. In Typee, his first novel, Melville demonstrates that layers of existence—in fact, real human lives—are denied when the story of human relations is framed as a narrative of progress. This thesis concludes by proposing that Melville reworks the idea of failure as a potential strategy against the totalizing narrative of advancing rationalism.

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This paper desires to research how leader¡¦s beliefs of excellence enterprise influence organizational performance through soft variables¡Ðtaking Herman Miller Company (the thirdest furniture company in the United State) as Example. According to collecting researches of excellence enterprise and information of Herman Miller company, we builded the model of Herman Miller Company. Therefore we can simulate the situation and policies, and find out the relationship between leader¡¦s belief and organizational performance.

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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.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-164).

This project considers the objective and material manifestations of invention, as well as the subjective processes (creative and mechanical) that invention signifies, in order to examine the historical, aesthetic, and ideological roles that invention plays within American literature. I argue that invention calls attention to a paradox within American culture that literary texts are especially adept at revealing: the newness that invention fetishizes often contains a violent underside, which American literary authors both depict and complicate. In chapter 1 I establish the project's foundation--how invention became such a culturally prominent mode of action, and how inventions came to symbolize the march of American "progress." I treat the rhetoric of invention as a text which can be close-read for what it reveals about the role of American artifice in the nation's self-conception.In chapter two I argue that Herman Melville's Typee delivers a series of inventive counter-narratives that disarm the stereotypes that support colonization, and that deflate the sense of superiority that propelled Western colonialism. Using the rhetoric of invention against itself, including its portrayal of patents and intellectual property as necessary regulative mechanisms in the advancement of technology and industry, Typee undermines this logic by tapping into the subversive potential of invention as a creative force.Chapter two examines the various historical, aesthetic and disciplinary roles played by a specific American invention: the world's first automatic weapon. Arguing that its power to subdue crowds was due more to its cultural status than its actual use, I examine the paradox presented by a weapon like the Gatling gun and its depiction in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee: that its elegant appearance and functionality, as well as the latency of the threat it posed, was a power that operated by taking advantage of aesthetic perception. The project's final chapter investigates the poetry and prose of Ezra Pound and Mina Loy for the enthusiasm it registers for, as Pound phrased it, "Machine Art." I argue that the formal invention that drove modernism cannot be divorced from the prominence of mechanical invention that American industry made prominent through the turn of the century.

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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.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-162).