19th century american culture
19th century american literature
A01=Samuel Otter
american culture
american literature
antebellum ethnology
Author_Samuel Otter
cannibalism
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
consciousness
emancipation
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
flogging
frederick douglass
gender
herman melville
human body
ideology
inside narratives
literary criticism
moby dick
nathaniel parker willis
national character
national identity
pierre
race
samuel george
samuel george morton
seamen
sentiment
slaves
solomon northup
tattooing
the body
thomas cole
travelers
typee
white jacket
william apess
Product details
- ISBN 9780520205826
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Mar 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In fascinating new contextual readings of four of Herman Melville's novels - Typee, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Pierre-Samuel. Otter delves into Melville's exorbitant prose to show how he anatomizes ideology, making it palpable and strange. Otter portrays Melville as deeply concerned with issues of race, the body, gender, sentiment, and national identity. He articulates a range of contemporary texts (narratives of travelers, seamen, and slaves; racial and aesthetic treatises; fiction; poetry; and essays) in order to flesh out Melville's discursive world. Otter presents Melville's works as 'inside narratives' offering material analyses of consciousness. Chapters center on the tattooed faces in Typee, the flogged bodies in White-Jacket, the scrutinized heads in Moby-Dick, and the desiring eyes and eloquent, constricted hearts of Pierre. Otter shows how Melville's books tell of the epic quest to know the secrets of the human body. Rather than dismiss contemporary beliefs about race, self, and nation, Melville inhabits them, acknowledging their appeal and examining their sway.
Meticulously researched and brilliantly argued, this groundbreaking study links Melville's words to his world and presses the relations between discourse and ideology. It will deeply influence all future studies of Melville and his work.
Samuel Otter is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
