ASH3002y Reading Assignment
April 19, 1999

Whaling as Work, Whaling as Metaphor

We've dipped into Moby-Dick with less regularity than I had planned during this term, but we're going to make up for it this week with a full immersion in the text.   I'd like to approach this week's discussion of Moby-Dick as an experiment in the American Studies approaches we've been exploring.  (In fact, this will be the model for much of the remainder of the term; rather than trying out a given approach on a given day, we'll more often try to examine the topic or text from a range of perspectives.)

For April 19, you should have course have finished Moby-Dick.  We'll spend time thinking about how this text works, and about it what it means to read it in an American Studies context, rather than in a literature class.  As you prepare for class, think about different ways that you might approach this novel.

Among other approaches to the novel, we'll consider ways of reading this text politically.  An important essay on this subject is Alan Heimert's "Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism" American Quarterly 15.4. (Winter 1963): 498-534.  Please read this essay before class.

Other Melville resources on the web include the following:

• Life and Works of Herman Melville
• Cyberscrimshaw
  

Here's a selection of articles from the many available on J-STOR  (listed in reverse chronological order):

• Lawrence Buell, "Melville and the Question of American Decolonization," American Literature 64.2 (June 1992): 215-237.
• Philip Fisher, "Democratic Social Space: Whitman, Melville, and the Promise of American Transparency," Representations 24 (Autumn 1988): 60-101.  (Note:  This essay is not about Moby-Dick per se, but addresses texts and issues that we've been discussing over the last few weeks.)
• Stephen C. Ausband, "The Whale and the Machine: An Approach to Moby-Dick," American Literature 47.2 (May 1975): 197-211.
• Patricia Barber, "Herman Melville's House in Brooklyn," American Literature 45.3 (Nov. 1973): 433-434.
• J. A. Ward, "The Function of the Cetological Chapters in Moby-Dick," American Literature 28.2 (May 1956): 164-183.
• William Braswell, "Melville as a Critic of Emerson," American Literature 9.3 (Nov. 1937): 317-334.