Short stories Publication Typee 1846 Omoo 1847 Moby Dick 1851 Pierre 1852 The Paradise of Bachelors The Tartarus of Maids and Bartleby the Scrivener were published in Piazza Tales ID: 336508
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Slide1
Herman Melville
Short storiesSlide2
Publication
Typee
(1846),
Omoo
(1847)
Moby Dick
(1851)
Pierre
(1852)
The Paradise of Bachelors, The
Tartarus
of Maids and Bartleby the Scrivener were published in
Piazza Tales
(1856)Slide3
Paradise … Tartarus
This story offers an explicit expression of Melville’s feelings concerning the linked civilisations of Europe and
America
Paradise is set in London
Tartarus
is set in New EnglandSlide4
Tartarus of Maids
The biological interpretation:
E.H.
Eby
, “The
Tartarus
of Maids”
Modern Language Quarterly
1 (1940) 95-100
.
“Melville’s intention is to represent through the medium of the story the biological burdens imposed on women because they bear children.” Slide5
But
The biological
interpretation
misses the irony implicit in this story
“I
could not but bethink me of that celebrated comparison of
John Locke
, who, in demonstration of this theory that man had no innate ideas, compared the human mind at birth to a sheet of blank paper; something destined to be scribbled on, but what sort of characters no soul might
tell” (72).
John Locke’s theory of the mind as a
tabula rasaSlide6
Paradise: Heaven
Tartarus
:
a mythological hell that in Greek mythology refers to the lowest part of the underworldSlide7
Tartarus
of maids
Industrialism
Black
and white as symbols are
ambiguous
Paper mill is set in “ a snow-white hamlet amidst the snow.”
The bachelors’ apartment was “wonderfully unpretending, old and snug”
It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter…are not indispensable to domestic
solacement
.” (58)Slide8
But Melville is not saying that London is better than New
England
Temple Bar is too sequestered, too far from the action of the world. In the same way as the paper mill is too remote from the centre of civilised American life
.
Soft-flowing Thames contrasts with the raging Blood RiverSlide9
Socrates and Cupid
Socrates and Cupid are symbolic of the civilisations in which the
seedsman
finds
them
Both civilisations—one an extension of the other—are morally weak. The old world suffers from inertia; the New World is spiritually stunted. Slide10
Bartleby
4 interpretations
Literary artist who refuses to produce the popular fiction demanded of him by a commercial society
See Leo Marx’s essay “Melville’s Parable of the Walls”,
Sewanee Review
61 (1953) 602-27Slide11
2. Bartleby is Marx’s alienated worker
See Louise K Barnett’s “Bartleby as alienated worker”
3. Bartleby is schizophrenic
See Morris
Beja
, “Bartleby and Schizophrenia”Slide12
4. Bartleby is Christ
See Bruce Franklin,
The Wake of the Gods: Melville’s MythologySlide13
Bartleby the Transcendentalist
Emerson delivered his lecture “The Transcendentalist” in 1848-49
Melville heard itSlide14
“The Transcendentalist”
what is popularly called
Trasncendentalism
among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842. As Thinkers, mankind are divided into 2 sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist. Slide15
“The Transcendentalist”
It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labours and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to
them.Slide16
“The Transcendentalist”
“If you do not need to hear my thought…If you cannot divine it, you would not understand what I say. I will not molest myself for you. I do not wish to be profaned”.