American Literature to 1900: Reading Questions and Information

Reading Questions and Background

Melville Bibliography

Location: [Reed College] [Department of English] [Laura Arnold][ Nation and Narration]Daily Readings

Moby-Dick: A Selected Bibliography

The purpose of this list is allow you to choose articles according to interests you have developed so far this semester. If you are leading discussion, please be prepared to sign up for an article this Friday (have a second choice ready). If you are not leading discussion, please pick 2-3 of the articles to read (preferably ones chosen by discussion leaders) during the next two weeks. You need not limit yourself to articles on this list. I would love it, though, if someone would do the Channing essay and Donald Pease's article.

History and Political Allegory
Rogin, "Moby-Dick and the American 1848" (Subversive Genealogy: 102-51)
Duban, "Nationalism and Providence in Ishmael's White World" (Melville's Major Fiction)

Genre
"Nation Longing for Form" (Nation and Narration, ed. Bhabha)
Matthiessen, "The Revenger's Tragedy" (American Ren. 396-466)
Lawrence Buell, "Moby-Dick as Sacred Text" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 53-72)

Point of View
Carolyn Porter, "Call Me Ishmael, or How to Make Double-Talk Speak" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 73-108)

Canon & Cultural Studies
William Spanos, "Moby-Dick and the American Canon" (The Errant Art of Moby-Dick1-42)
Toni Morrison, "Unspeakable Thins Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" (Michigan Quarterly Review. 28(1). Winter 1989. 1-34.
Donald Pease, "Melville and Cultural Persuasion" (Visionary Compacts 235-75)

Masculinity and Sexuality
Leverenz, "Ahab's Queenly Personality"(Manhood and the American Renaissance 279-306)
Robert Martin, "'Our Hearts Honeymoon" (Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of H. Melville 67-94)

Religion
Channing, "The Moral Argument Against Calvinism" (Reader)
Herbert, "Calvinist Earthquake" (New Essay s on Moby-Dick 109-140)
James McIntosh, "The Mariner's Multiple Quest" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 3-52)
Lawrence Buell, "Moby-Dick as Sacred Text" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 53-72)

Race
Toni Morrison, "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" (Michigan Quarterly Review. 28(1). Winter 1989. 1-34.

Art
Robert Wallace, "Bulkington, J.M. Turner, and 'The Lee Shore'" (Savage Eye, 55-76--should be read with chapter 23). Also see Robert Wallace's Melville and Turner.
Bryan Wolf, "When is a Painting Most Like a Whale?: Ishmael, Moby-Dick, and the Sublime" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 141-80)
Schultz, Elizabeth A. Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art.

The Sublime
Bryan Wolf, "When is a Painting Most Like a Whale?: Ishmael, Moby-Dick, and the Sublime" (New Essays on Moby-Dick 141-80)

Cities
Wyn Kelley, "Escaping the City" (any of the three chapters; Melville's City: Literacy and Urban Form.

Click here to see a copy of the syllabus

Laura.Arnold@Reed.edu