Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville RevivalKent State University Press, 2001 - 730 pages In this provocative and vigorously argued interdisciplinary study of the development of institutional censorship, Clare Spark explores the complexities of 20th-century American cultural politics through the protagonists of the Melville Revival. She investigates closely the history of the Revival and its key critics, who manipulated Melville's life and writings in the service of their own particular social and political agendas. Although often boldly conjectural and speculative, Spark's assertions are based on her meticulous and thorough exploration of either newly opened or previously unexplored archival materials of leading Melville scholars. In addressing the distinction between what she calls the radical and conservative Enlightenment, Spark makes her way through Melville's often confusing and contradictory texts and examines the disputes within Melville scholarship, which often center on the mesmerizing figure of Ahab as either a democratic hero or a totalitarian dictator, corresponding to the rival epistemologies of modern society. |
Contents
The Moderate Response to NineteenthCentury Radicalism | 30 |
The Fatal Line | 81 |
Melville and the Radical Puritans | 139 |
Copyright | |
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Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival Clare L. Spark Limited preview - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Ahab Ahab's American Literature artist authority Benito Cereno Billy Budd biography Captain Captain Ahab Carl Van Doren character Charles Olson Chase Christian Clarel Columbia conflict conservative corporatist critical cultural Daniel Orme democracy democratic edition Eisenstein Eleanor Metcalf Enlightenment evil F. O. Matthiessen fascism father feel film Freeman Gansevoort Harvard Hawthorne Hayford heart Henry Herman Melville Hitler Howard human intellectual interest Isabel Ishmael Jay Leyda Jews labor Lemuel Shaw letter Leyda Papers liberal literary Margoth material materialist Matthiessen Melville problem Melville Revival Melville scholars Melville studies Melville's Melvilleans Milton mind Moby Dick Moby-Dick modern moral Morewood mother Mumford Murray Murray's nature perhaps Pierre Pierre's political published puritan quoted radical readers reform Review Revolution romantic sailors seems Shaw social society spirit story suggests things Thorp thought tion told truth UCLA University Weaver whale White-Jacket writing wrote York