Melville's Monumental Imagination

by Ian S. Maloney

Overview

Melville's Monumental Imagination explores the connection between the contested 19th century American monument tradition and one of the nation's most revered authors, Herman Melville (1819-1891). The book was written to fill a void in recent Melville scholarship. To date, there has not been a monograph that focuses exclusively on Melville's incorporation of monuments in his fictional world. The book charts the territory of Melville's novels in order to provide a trajectory of the monumental image in one particular literary form. This feature allows the reader to gradually see the monumental image as an important marker that sheds light into Melville's eventual abandonment of long fiction. Melville'sMonumental Imagination combines literary analysis and cultural criticism for a long neglected aspect of our nation's iconic development in statuary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135489632
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Series:	Studies in Major Literary Authors
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	166
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ian S. Maloney serves as Assistant Professor of English at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, NY. His research interests are in American culture and literature, and particularly in interdisciplinary studies. He received his Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2004.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Melville's Monumental Mind2. Peeping into Polynesian Memorials: Ekphrastic Indifference in Travel and Typee3. Plodding through Mardi's Mazes and Monuments: The Imaginary Voyage into Ekphrastic Hope4. Redburn and The Realistic Journey of Ekphrastic Fear5. Fast Fish, Fluid Forms, and Moby-Dick6. Pierre and Israel Potter: Fragments, Fissures, and Forgotten Heroes in Stone and PrintBibliographyIndex