This project relies on two main bodies of work: the text and reception history of Moby-Dick. I argue that the novel’s prophetic insights unfold in its failure and resurrection. The reception history consists of early reviewers, biographers, and critics both hailing and discounting Moby-Dick’s literary value. The first section, “Proto-Modernist Melville: Specific Difficulty in Moby-Dick,” explores the peculiar difficulty inherent in the text of Moby-Dick, namely its divergent, evasive, and hieroglyphic properties. Chapter 2, “Reception: Nineteenth-Century Failure and Modernist Success,” chronicles the novel’s reception history, focusing largely on the critics of twentieth-century modernism. In “Moby-Dick as Prophetic Anticipation and Fulfillment,” I examine the link between the inherent difficulty found within Moby-Dick and its reception history. I propose that Melville’s novel theorizes its prophetic anticipation of literary modernism as well as Melville’s own authorial failure and redemption narrative.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GEORGIA/oai:scholarworks.gsu.edu:english_theses-1199 |
| Date | 16 December 2015 |
| Creators | Harrell, Randall W. |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University |
| Source Sets | Georgia State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | English Theses |
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