In commencing the study of the style of Moby Dick, the student is confronted with several questions. Most important, perhaps, is the question of how much the style has contributed to the importance of the book, to the great adulation accorded it by many critics during the last quarter century. Did Melville’s peculiar ways of expressing his ideas have some particularly timely appeal to the post-WWI Generation? It is a highly mannered style, unique as that of Tristram Shandy. Yet while Sterne’s book was greatly enjoyed by the author’s contemporaries, Moby-Dick aroused very little contemporary interest. Was the style of the book a barrier to its appreciation by earlier readers? A great deal of Moby-Dick criticism is highly subjective. It is often difficult to find a basis for it in the text, which frequently seems merely to have afforded a spring-board for creative thinking on the part of the critic. The imagery and the symbolism are stretched to include concepts that appear remote from the author’s words. How much is the style responsible for this accretion of mystical thinking upon the text? Opinions are extreme as to the ultimate position of Moby-Dick among the landmarks of literature. Some critics rate it with Shakespeare and the Bible; some view it as a monstrosity. While this happens to some degree to most works which are finally accepted as literary masterpieces, how much is the divergence among Moby-Dick critics intensified because the style of the book has caused difficulties of interpretation? To answer such questions demands first a definition of style as it is to be applied to Moby-Dick. What is style? What constitutes “good” style? How far can an individual author be judged by such set canons? Based upon this there should follow an objective description of the style of the book, its form, its language, its imagery. How does Melville use words? How does he put together his sentences? What over-all design does he employ, and how does he relate the parts to the whole? Such an analysis can be better understood if the source of certain stylistic peculiarities is considered. Melville, like many English-speaking authors, owes a great debt to the Bible and to Shakespeare. How was his use of these sources peculiar to himself? What other important sources are apparent in his work? Finally, a review should be presented of various critical opinions of Melville’s style. Upon what are these evaluations based? How far is the critic interpreting Melville, and how far is he riding a hobby horse of his own?

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N/A / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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An understanding of the influence of Shakespeare on the structure and language of Moby-Dick is important because the plays of Shakespeare gave Melville a sudden insight into the significance of form and because his absorption of Shakespearean rhetoric enabled him to solve a serious artistic problem. In Moby-Dick Melville wished to write a work of symbolic fiction which would have both epic scope and tragic depth, but his difficulty lay in finding a structural and stylistic method which would provide the amplitude necessary to epic and at the same time could achieve the compression and verbal economy necessary to tragedy. He solved this problem by learning from Shakespeare to create a multi-layered dramatic structure and to use a dramatic language which becomes one layer of that structure. In Shakespeare's greatest plays there is a virtual fusion of form and meaning, and it is this fusion which, in its greatest moments, the language of Moby-Dick achieves.

Embora haja um intervalo de mais de um século entre a publicação de Moby-Dick (1851) e a de Grande sertão: veredas (1956), o romance de João Guimarães Rosa apresenta, quer na forma, quer no conteúdo ou em seus respectivos desdobramentos alegóricos, muitos pontos em comum com o livro de Herman Melville. Produtos de literaturas periféricas de países ainda em processo de formação, essas obras são narrativas híbridas que não se encaixam na concepção original do romance moderno europeu (ou novel): ambas resgatam e transformam a épica e a tragédia, os chamados gêneros altos, para dar voz a um indivíduo que, à margem da sociedade de seu tempo, erra por um vasto espaço inóspito enquanto empenha-se em combates mortais. O propósito deste estudo é analisar, sob um ponto de vista comparativo, passos de Moby-Dick e Grande sertão: veredas, divididos de acordo com os gêneros literários que abarcam e, destacando semelhanças e diferenças, propor Moby-Dick, livro que Guimarães Rosa tinha em sua biblioteca pessoal, como uma das fontes inspiradoras do Grande sertão. / Although written more than a century apart, American Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851) and Brazilian João Guimarães Rosas The Devil do Pay in the Backlands (1956) sharewhether in format, content, and even in their allegorical significancemany common traits. As products of peripheral literatures of countries undergoing a formative process, both are hybrid narratives that do not fit into the original concept of the European novel; their authors resort to, and transform, the so-called high genres, the epic and the tragedy, to give voice to an individual who, at the margin of the society of his time, wanders through a vast and hostile space whilst engaged in lethal combats. In telling his memories, that individual also outlines a survey of the society from which he is excluded, mixing his history with that of his country. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare extracts from Moby-Dick and The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, divided according to the literary genres that both used and transformed, and, by highlighting similarities and differences, identify Moby-Dick, a book that Rosa had in his personal library, as one of the literary sources for The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.

Neste estudo de análise e interpretação de Moby-Dick (1851), de Herman Melville (1819-1891), pretendemos formular e esclarecer questões relativas ao momento de definição do romance norte-americano, bem como à obra que se traduz como o esforço mais radical de um norte-americano na tentativa de, então, levar a forma romance ao estudo e reflexão sobre sua sociedade. Para tanto, recuperamos da leitura da obra os aspectos que mais fortemente tematizam tal intento: a crise ideológica de fins da década de 1840, quando os ideais revolucionários de igualdade da antiga república são finalmente confrontados com as consequências de sua integração no sistema capitalista mundializado questão central de Redburn (1849) e White-Jacket (1850), romances que preparam Moby-Dick e marcam as primeiras experiências de Melville como escritor social; o conceito de fronteira, problema de definição identitária norte-americana que abarca desde a ocupação da wilderness puritana no século XVII ao estabelecimento, à época de Melville, de uma política de Estado imperialista e, ademais, passa pela cristalização de perspectivas culturalmente particulares de propriedade e formação social de classe; e, finalmente, as noções de técnica e trabalho, diretamente implicadas na atividade baleeira e, de modo mais amplo, no avanço civilizatório norte-americano, e para quais pesam a consciência do valor social do trabalho livre e sua coexistência com a escravidão. É sob tais preocupações que contemplaremos, à luz da teoria crítica e da tradição crítica brasileira, as especificidades formais do romance, a saber, a apropriação estrutural do trágico em contraposição à épica, que define o percurso de Ahab, o capitão do Pequod, em sua caçada a Moby Dick, e a formação de um narrador reflexionante, o sobrevivente Ishmael, que retoma o passado da catástrofe para ferir o presente em que se perpetuam, no roldão do ingresso norte-americano na modernidade, as condições para sua reprodução. / Through an analytical and interpretative study of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick I intend to formulate and clarify the historical turning point of the American novel, specifically what is deemed the most radical effort of an American writer to bring a comprehensive study on society into novelistic form. In order to accomplish that, I reconsider some of the features of Moby-Dick that strongly appealed to the times. First the ideological crisis of the 1840s, when the equalitarian revolutionary ideals of the Independence were finally confronted by the consequences of the U.S. being fully compromised to the Industrial Revolution and the capitalistic worldwide system. This is a central issue in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both novels where some major features of Moby-Dick are anticipated and firstly tested. Second, I scrutinize the concept of frontier -- a national identity issue that can be traced back to the Puritan 17th century errand into the wilderness that is strongly attached in the age of Melville to the ideological making of American imperialism. Besides, it also has had a major role in the crystallization of culturally specific perspectives on property and the establishment of social classes. Finally, I reconsider the notions of technique and labor, directly implied in the whaling industry and in a more general way in the marching of American civilization towards the West, which has had a strong impact on the understanding of the social significance of free labor and its coexistence with slavery. With those things under consideration, and through the surmises of the Critical Theory and the Brazilian tradition of social and literary criticism as well, it is my aim to shed light on some esthetical features of the novel, particularly on the tragic structure (as opposed to the epic) that defines the career of Pequods Captain Ahab and his obsessive chasing of Moby Dick, and the constitution of a self-reflexive narrator, the survivor Ishmael, who recalls the past of the catastrophe in order to attack the social reproduction of its conditions in the present.

Embora haja um intervalo de mais de um século entre a publicação de Moby-Dick (1851) e a de Grande sertão: veredas (1956), o romance de João Guimarães Rosa apresenta, quer na forma, quer no conteúdo ou em seus respectivos desdobramentos alegóricos, muitos pontos em comum com o livro de Herman Melville. Produtos de literaturas periféricas de países ainda em processo de formação, essas obras são narrativas híbridas que não se encaixam na concepção original do romance moderno europeu (ou novel): ambas resgatam e transformam a épica e a tragédia, os chamados gêneros altos, para dar voz a um indivíduo que, à margem da sociedade de seu tempo, erra por um vasto espaço inóspito enquanto empenha-se em combates mortais. O propósito deste estudo é analisar, sob um ponto de vista comparativo, passos de Moby-Dick e Grande sertão: veredas, divididos de acordo com os gêneros literários que abarcam e, destacando semelhanças e diferenças, propor Moby-Dick, livro que Guimarães Rosa tinha em sua biblioteca pessoal, como uma das fontes inspiradoras do Grande sertão. / Although written more than a century apart, American Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851) and Brazilian João Guimarães Rosas The Devil do Pay in the Backlands (1956) sharewhether in format, content, and even in their allegorical significancemany common traits. As products of peripheral literatures of countries undergoing a formative process, both are hybrid narratives that do not fit into the original concept of the European novel; their authors resort to, and transform, the so-called high genres, the epic and the tragedy, to give voice to an individual who, at the margin of the society of his time, wanders through a vast and hostile space whilst engaged in lethal combats. In telling his memories, that individual also outlines a survey of the society from which he is excluded, mixing his history with that of his country. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare extracts from Moby-Dick and The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, divided according to the literary genres that both used and transformed, and, by highlighting similarities and differences, identify Moby-Dick, a book that Rosa had in his personal library, as one of the literary sources for The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.

This paper investigates Herman Melville’s quest for spiritual stability and certainty in his novel Moby-Dick. The analysis establishes a philosophical tradition of doubt towards the Bible, outlining the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, Benedict de Spinoza, David Hume, Thomas Paine and John Henry Newman. This historical survey of spiritual uncertainty establishes the issue of uncertainty that Melville writes about in the nineteenth century. Having assessed the issue of doubt, I then analyze Melville’s use of metaphorical charts, which his characters use to resolve this issue. Finally, I present Melville’s philosophical findings as he expresses them through the metaphor of whaling. Here, I also scrutinize Melville’s depiction of nature, as well as his presentation of the dichotomy between contemplative and active questing, as represented by the characters Ishmael and Ahab.

Neste estudo de análise e interpretação de Moby-Dick (1851), de Herman Melville (1819-1891), pretendemos formular e esclarecer questões relativas ao momento de definição do romance norte-americano, bem como à obra que se traduz como o esforço mais radical de um norte-americano na tentativa de, então, levar a forma romance ao estudo e reflexão sobre sua sociedade. Para tanto, recuperamos da leitura da obra os aspectos que mais fortemente tematizam tal intento: a crise ideológica de fins da década de 1840, quando os ideais revolucionários de igualdade da antiga república são finalmente confrontados com as consequências de sua integração no sistema capitalista mundializado questão central de Redburn (1849) e White-Jacket (1850), romances que preparam Moby-Dick e marcam as primeiras experiências de Melville como escritor social; o conceito de fronteira, problema de definição identitária norte-americana que abarca desde a ocupação da wilderness puritana no século XVII ao estabelecimento, à época de Melville, de uma política de Estado imperialista e, ademais, passa pela cristalização de perspectivas culturalmente particulares de propriedade e formação social de classe; e, finalmente, as noções de técnica e trabalho, diretamente implicadas na atividade baleeira e, de modo mais amplo, no avanço civilizatório norte-americano, e para quais pesam a consciência do valor social do trabalho livre e sua coexistência com a escravidão. É sob tais preocupações que contemplaremos, à luz da teoria crítica e da tradição crítica brasileira, as especificidades formais do romance, a saber, a apropriação estrutural do trágico em contraposição à épica, que define o percurso de Ahab, o capitão do Pequod, em sua caçada a Moby Dick, e a formação de um narrador reflexionante, o sobrevivente Ishmael, que retoma o passado da catástrofe para ferir o presente em que se perpetuam, no roldão do ingresso norte-americano na modernidade, as condições para sua reprodução. / Through an analytical and interpretative study of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick I intend to formulate and clarify the historical turning point of the American novel, specifically what is deemed the most radical effort of an American writer to bring a comprehensive study on society into novelistic form. In order to accomplish that, I reconsider some of the features of Moby-Dick that strongly appealed to the times. First the ideological crisis of the 1840s, when the equalitarian revolutionary ideals of the Independence were finally confronted by the consequences of the U.S. being fully compromised to the Industrial Revolution and the capitalistic worldwide system. This is a central issue in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both novels where some major features of Moby-Dick are anticipated and firstly tested. Second, I scrutinize the concept of frontier -- a national identity issue that can be traced back to the Puritan 17th century errand into the wilderness that is strongly attached in the age of Melville to the ideological making of American imperialism. Besides, it also has had a major role in the crystallization of culturally specific perspectives on property and the establishment of social classes. Finally, I reconsider the notions of technique and labor, directly implied in the whaling industry and in a more general way in the marching of American civilization towards the West, which has had a strong impact on the understanding of the social significance of free labor and its coexistence with slavery. With those things under consideration, and through the surmises of the Critical Theory and the Brazilian tradition of social and literary criticism as well, it is my aim to shed light on some esthetical features of the novel, particularly on the tragic structure (as opposed to the epic) that defines the career of Pequods Captain Ahab and his obsessive chasing of Moby Dick, and the constitution of a self-reflexive narrator, the survivor Ishmael, who recalls the past of the catastrophe in order to attack the social reproduction of its conditions in the present.