Damien Schlarb - Melvilles Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

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CROSSING THE ETHNIC DIVIDE

The Multiethnic Church on a Mission

Kathleen Garces-Foley

GOD AND THE VICTIM

Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom

Jennifer Erin Beste

THE CREATIVE SUFFERING OF THE TRIUNE GOD

An Evolutionary Theology

Gloria L. Schaab

A THEOLOGY OF CRITICISM

Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination

Michael P. Murphy

INCARNATION ANYWAY

Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology

Edwin Chr. Van Driel

DISABILITY AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities

Deborah Beth Creamer

MEETING GOD ON THE CROSS

Christ, the Cross, and the Feminist Critique

Arnfrur Gumundsdttir

MUSLIMS, SCHOLARS, SOLDIERS

The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibd Immate Traditions

Adam R. Gaiser

RACE AND RELIGION IN AMERICAN BUDDHISM

White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation

Joseph Cheah

JOURNEY BACK TO GOD

Origen on the Problem of Evil

Mark S. M. Scott

BEYOND THE WALLS

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Edith Stein on the Significance of Empathy for Jewish-Christian Dialogue

Joseph Redfield Palmisano, SJ

TYPES OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY

Method, System, Spirit

Christopher A. Stephenson

OTHER DREAMS OF FREEDOM

Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking

Yvonne C. Zimmerman

LIBERALISM VERSUS POSTLIBERALISM

The Great Divide in Twentieth-Century Theology

John Allan Knight

IMAGE, IDENTITY, AND THE FORMING OF THE AUGUSTINIAN SOUL

Matthew Drever

RIGHTEOUS RHETORIC

Sex, Speech, and the Politics of Concerned Women for America

Leslie Durrough Smith

ENFOLDING SILENCE

The Transformation of Japanese American Religion and Art under Oppression

Brett J. Esaki

LONGING AND LETTING GO

Christian and Hindu Practices of Passionate Non-Attachment

Holly Hillgardner

MEANING IN OUR BODIES

Sensory Experience as Constructive Theological Imagination

Heike Peckruhn

INTERPRETING ISLAM IN CHINA

Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab

Kristian Petersen

THE GOODNESS OF HOME

Human and Divine Love and the Making of the Self

Natalia Marandiuc

UNSAYING GOD

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

TROELTSCHS ESCHATOLOGICAL ABSOLUTE

Evan Kue

MELVILLES WISDOM

Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

Damien B. Schlarb

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schlarb, Damien, author.

Title: Melvilles wisdom : religion, skepticism, and literature in

nineteenth-century America / by Damien Schlarb.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021. |

Series: AAR academy series | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021008106 (print) | LCCN 2021008107 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197585566 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197585580 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197585597

Subjects: LCSH: Melville, Herman, 18191891Religion. | Bible. Old

TestamentIn literature. | Religion and literatureUnited

StatesHistory19th century. | Religion in literature. | Bible and literature.

Classification: LCC PS2388.R4 S35 2021 (print) | LCC PS2388.R4 (ebook) |

DDC 813/.3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008106

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008107

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197585566.001.0001

For Ian and Svenja with love

When he was nearing the completion of Moby-Dick in 1850, Herman Melville wrote to his friend the editor Evert Duyckinck, A book in a mans brain is better off than a book bound in calfat any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panelyou have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble. Having finished this book, I can say that retrieving this particular piece from my mental wall and finally being able to exhibit it to the critical eyes of the world was worth the trouble. And while the brushstrokes are my own, taking the painting down has been a collaborative effort.

Several people across numerous institutions and two continents helped bring this book into the world. Foremost among them are Reiner Smolinski and Oliver Scheiding, who co-advised me on my dissertation and continued to lend valuable advice, criticism, and support beyond its completion. Reiner Smolinski at Georgia State University showed me the ropes of academia and eventually became my dissertation director. I worked as his research assistant when he was editing the first volume of Cotton Mathers then-unpublished Biblia Americana, the first Bible commentary created in the American colonies. Aiding him in this work, for me, became a guided tour through Mathers compendious biblical exegesis that laid the foundation for the present book. Reiner remains a mentor and a friend, whose teachings and advice I deeply cherish. Oliver Scheiding, my current chair at Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, is always on hand with constructive feedback and valuable strategic advice. He gave me my first academic position as a doctoral student when I returned from the United States to Germany. His energy, work ethic, and passion drive those around him. I thank him for his trust and support. The other members of my dissertation committee offered invaluable feedback, both practical and scholarly: Mark Noble read several early project and proposal drafts and gave detailed advice on how to get where I was trying to go, even when I wasnt sure about the heading. Paul Schmidt first introduced me to John Henry Newman and showed me how the nineteenth-century crisis in spirituality fostered manifold transatlantic responses.