This thesis considers Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as a textual strategy of possible, alternative models of reading, as well as a text in itself. I approach the text as a drama of interpretations and argue that the individual consciousnesses of different interpreters represent different interpretive strategies, and that these differences suggest distinct structures of community. This approach becomes more focussed in the discussion of Ahab and Ishmael as representatives of two contrasting interpretive possibilities, of "reading" the text as a "pasteboard mask" which conceals a stable identity and single "truth," versus "reading" the text of the "defaced" and hence indeterminate surface of changing "meanings." Each strategy implies a different way of conceiving "space" as the "place" where community is formed, and though critics frequently perceive the ending of Moby-Dick as a paradoxical conflict between these two visionary quests, I suggest that Ishmael's survival presents a possible resolution, where Moby Dick becomes the narrative of filling space with many narratives to create the text Moby-Dick.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.60042 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Jabalpurwala, Inez |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001239481, proquestno: AAIMM67754, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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