Table of Contents
Melville, Harper, Stowe and intro to Whitman: Exploration of Resistance and Celebration of self, with special focus on Melville and the problem of the artist in America
PPT Slide
Melville and Hawthorne
Hawthorne on Melville’s work
Hawthorne on Melville, cont.
Hawthorne on Melville, cont.
Sophia Hawthorne on Melville
Melville, Hawthorne, and Stowe
Melville’s early fall from privilege and what he gained : “a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.”
“a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,” continued
The problem of the artist in America: “all my books are botches.”
Elizabeth Shaw Melville’s view in 1847:
The problem of the artist, cont.
Elizabeth Shaw Melville’s view in 1876:
Melville’s dilemma as an artist
Melville's Lifetime Literary Earnings
Melville's Posthumous Literary Earnings
Melville's Post. Literary Earnings, cont.
The problem of the artist in America, continued. Stowe and Melville
The artist in America, continued.
The artist in America, continued.
The artist in America, continued.
Melville’s political and social concerns
in Moby-Dick, his masterpiece,
“Bartleby the Scrivener”
Point of View: First person participant, or whose story is it?
A critique of “easy,” “retreat,” and “safe”
Lover of caution, control, and gold
Caution and prudence are not the same as a higher prudence: Whitman
Whitman on Prudence, cont.
I love money and I don’t like to rock the boat or show emotions
I’m not protesting, but
Walls as Central Metaphor
Human Xerox Machines: Scriveners
Blots are human, like Georgiana’s birthmark
The unpredictable human, the body
The embarrassing body and the troubling mind
Fragments, not Human Beings
“silently, palely, mechanically” (2407)
“I prefer not to.” (2409)
“he is useful to me” (2410)
Melville’s use of economic metaphors as a critique of materialism
Who is Bartleby, and who is the lawyer?
The changed character
Getting Beyond a View That only the “Useful” matters
The struggle with his conscience
The lawyer’s breakthrough
The lawyer’s conscience knows...
The miracle of the trembling hands
More Walls: Prisons, Bartleby’s wall, Death: you can’t buy your (or anyone’s) way out
Final walls: prison walls, Bartleby’s wall, and Death, cont., and the lawyer’s effort to make meaning
Epilogue
Epilogue, cont.
Whitman intro.
Whitman intro p. 2
Whitman intro p. 3: the poet as lover, a priest of the body and the soul; yes, sex
Whitman intro p. 4: the poet Emerson called for, even if he had to cheat a little
Whitman intro p. 5: Not selfish, but self-loving
American Romantic Painting
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Author: Karen Osborne
Email: kosborne@popmail.colum.edu
Other information:
American Authors: Beginnings to Dickinson
Text: the Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter et al.
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