ASH3002y Reading Assignment
April 21, 1999

More Melville

April 21 is scheduled to be a class on "Melville's Wooden World," but since you've spent some time on ship images with Professor McCaughey, and since we'll be heading out on the schooner in May, I thought I'd take this class for a bit more general discussion of Moby-Dick.  Following our discussion on Monday, I'd like you to prepare for this class by examining closely a few specific chapters:

• Chapter 10:  "A Bosom Friend"
• Chapter 35:  "The Mast-Head"
• Chapter 42:  "The Whiteness of the Whale"
• Chapter 72:  "The Monkey Rope"
• Chapter 94:  "A Squeeze of the Hand"
• Chapter 119:  "The Candles"
• Epilogue

We'll extend our discussion of  Moby-Dick to address theological issues, and we'll connect this text both to Winthrop's Modell of Christian Charitie and to Emerson's Nature.  Please bring your copies of these texts to class.

Also, please read your classmates' thoughts on technology and American Studies.   We will spend part of our class time discussing them.

For your reference, here are the links that were included in Monday's reading assignment:

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.
• Alan Heimert,  "Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism"  American Quarterly 15.4. (Winter 1963): 498-534. 
• 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.