Negotiating Transcendentalism, Escaping « Paradise
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6187918 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ramón Espejo Romero (0000-0002-4239-244X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-24 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejas.8467 |
| OpenAlex | W2063337049 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 14 |
By reviewing the critical literature on Melville and Transcendentalism and then undertaking a close reading of Moby-Dick (1851), this paper argues that the novel reflects, among other things, an ongoing debate between the novelist and Transcendentalist philosophy. While in later works, Melville seems to express a more robust condemnation of the Concord movement and its dangerous idealism, Moby-Dick occupies less firmly-defined territory. The Transcendentalist urge of an Ahab to be himself is a counterpoint to Ishmael’s more idiosyncratic deployment of self-reliance, communion with the oversoul, and various other concepts easy to trace back to Emerson or Thoreau. The conclusion seems to be that a negotiation is necessary if Transcendentalism is to be heeded at all, precisely the kind of negotiation Ishmael undertakes throughout the novel, one which spares him from the maelstrom created by a more radical approach to self-acceptance and self-fashioning
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Counterpoint · Epistemology · Idealism · Literature · Negotiation · Paradise · Paradise lost · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |