A01=Jonathan A. Cook
Author_Jonathan A. Cook
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
The Arts: World Literature
Product details
- ISBN 9780313294044
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 30 Apr 1996
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This valuable new addition to Melville studies offers a ground-breaking interpretation of Melville's last published novel, one of the most complex texts in American literature and a work that has long been noted for the divergent critical views it has elicited. Reading the novel as a generic hybrid of narrative satire and apolyptic vision, Cook situates the novel in its implicit theological, historical, and biographical contexts: he examines the novel's relation to Melville's heterodox ideas of the deity, to the increasingly commercialized cultural milieu of antebellum America, and to Melville's own life and literary career. Uncovering a wealth of new data on the novel's satirical applications, including its covert use of Melville's friends and family for character models, Cook offers a compelling reading of The Confidence-Man - one that is sure to influence our future conception of its creator.
JONATHAN A. COOK has a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has been a lecturer at Boston University and has published articles on Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville.
