Melville’s Philosophies

Description

Melville’s Philosophies departs from a long tradition of critical assessments of Melville that dismissed his philosophical capacities as ingenious but muddled. Its contributors do not apply philosophy to Melville in order to detect just how much of it he knew or understood. To the contrary, they try to hear the philosophical arguments themselves—often very strange and quite radical—that Melville never stopped articulating and reformulating. What emerges is a Melville who is materialistically oriented in a radical way, a Melville who thinks about life forms not just in the context of contemporary sciences but also ontologically. Melville’s Philosophies recovers a Melville who is a thinker of great caliber, which means obliquely but dramatically reversing the way the critical tradition has characterized his ideas. Finally, as a result of the readings collected here, Melville emerges as a very relevant thinker for contemporary philosophical concerns, such as the materialist turn, climate change, and post-humanism. Cover Contents List of Figures Introduction: Reconstructing Melville Branka Arsić and K. L. Evans Part One World-Making 1 Gospel Cetology K. L. Evans 2 Billy Budd, Billy Budd Stuart Burrows 3 Science, Philosophy, and Aesthetics in “The Apple-Tree Table” Maurice S. Lee 4 Clarel, Doubt, Delay Paul Hurh Part Two Love Stories 5 The Lawyer’s Tale: Preference, Responsibility, and Personhood in Melville’s “Story of Wall-street” Rachel Cole 6 Pierre in Love Kenneth Dauber 7 Phenomenology Beyond the Phantom Limb: Melvillean Figuration and Chronic Pain Michael D. Snediker 8 “Learning, unlearning, word by word”: Feeling Faith in Melville’s Clarel Rhian Williams Part Three Arts 9 Fateful Gestures: On Movement and the Maneuvers of Style in “Benito Cereno” James D. Lilley 10 Melville, Poetry, Prints Samuel Otter 11 A Final Appearance with Elihu Vedder: Melville’s Visions Elisa Tamarkin 12 La téméraire littéraire: Reckless Adaptation in Pierre and Pola X Paul Grimstad Part Four Communities 13 Melville’s Leviathan Paul Downes 14 Bartleby’s Screen Colin Dayan 15 Melville’s Misanthropology Michael Jonik 16 Desertscapes: Geological Politics in Clarel Branka Arsić Contributors Index