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In fascinating new contextual readings of four of Herman Melvilles novels--Typee, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Pierre--Samuel Otter delves into Melvilles 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 Melvilles discursive world.Otter presents Melvilles 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 Melvilles 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 Melvilles words to his world and presses the relations between discourse and ideology. It will deeply influence all future studies of Melville and his work.
