Melville’s Anatomies

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University of California Press, 1999 M03 5 - 418 pages
In fascinating new contextual readings of four of Herman Melville's novels—Typee, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Pierre—Samuel Otter delves into Melville's 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 Melville's discursive world.

Otter presents Melville's 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 Melville's 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 Melville's words to his world and presses the relations between discourse and ideology. It will deeply influence all future studies of Melville and his work.
 

Contents

Losing Face in Typee
9
EATING THE BODY IN COOK KRUSENSTERN AND PORTER
11
READING THE BODY IN LANGSDORFF AND MELVILLE
20
Jumping out of Ones Skin in WhiteJacket
50
SHIP STATE AND BODY
52
THE SCENE OF FLOGGING IN DOUGLASS PENNINGTON AND NORTHUP
58
THE ANALOGY WITH SLAVERY IN LEECH MCNALLY BROWNE AND DANA
67
WHITEJACKETS EMANCIPATION
77
NATURAL FEATURES AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
174
THOMAS COLE AND THE VISUAL EMBRACE
178
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS AND THE TASTE FOR SCENERY
184
SUSAN COOPER AND THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION
190
MELVILLES CLOGGED OPTICS
193
Inscribed Hearts in Pierre
208
THE HEART ON THE PAGE
209
DONALD GRANT MITCHELLS TREATISES CONCERNING THE SENTIMENTAL AFFECTIONS
213

SAILING ON
96
Getting inside Heads in MobyDick
101
SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON AND THE QUEST FOR CRANIAL CONTENTS
102
THE LAWS OF ANATOMY IN ANTEBELLUM ETHNOLOGY
118
THE ETHNOLOGICAL CRITIQUES OF DOUGLASS BROWN AND APESS
126
CETOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY IN MOBYDICK
132
TO LOOK AND TO KNOW
159
Penetrating Eyes in Pierre
172
FANNY FERNS EMOTIONAL INVESTMENTS
227
THE STRANGLING DIASTOLE AND SYSTOLE OF PIERRE
238
After the Anatomies
255
Notes
263
Bibliography
325
Index
355
Copyright

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Page 7 - What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,— it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

About the author (1999)

Samuel Otter is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

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