Construction of Whiteness and Blackness in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno

Rather than resist slavery directly, the narrative world of Benito Cereno disperses the rejection of tyranny through the intricate construction of subject-object relations, the situational context, Benito Cereno’s stifled, semi-articulated statements, the imagery of the narrative and its complex narrative structure. Through silences, multiple viewpoints, innuendos, refusal to solve certain issues definitely while being explicit about this indeterminacy, Melville’s narrative not only inscribes itself in the Romantic questioning of historiography, but also gestures towards postmodernist inconclusiveness and the writerly text in which the reader is invited to be its co-author who fills out the gaps and silences with their own interpretation.

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Voiceless ends: Melville’s Benito Cereno and the translator in narrative discourse

Language and Literature ◽

10.1177/0963947014536506 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 255-269 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Michael Boyden

Keyword(s):

New World ◽

Narrative Structure ◽

Narrative Discourse ◽

Narrative Texts ◽

Benito Cereno

The first part of this article confronts the ways in which translation scholars have drawn on insights from narratology to make sense of the translator’s involvement in narrative texts. It first considers competing metaphors for conceptualizing the translator’s involvement, arguing for a clearer differentiation between modes of framing and telling. Next, it evaluates the ways in which translation scholars have attempted to integrate the translator as a separate textual agent in governing models of narrative communication, concluding that the conceptual gains to be reaped from positing the translator as a separate enunciator or agent in narrative transactions are limited. The second part of the article analyzes two Dutch translations of Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno, by Johan Palm (1950) and Jean Schalekamp (1977) respectively. Rather than striving to isolate the translators as separate tellers or co-producers of narrative structure, the analysis reveals that their agency shows foremost in the ways the ‘voiceless’ narrative of New World slavery is perspectivized in view of changing readerly expectations.

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The Mystery of Mignon: Object Relations, Abandonment, Child Abuse and Narrative Structure

Goethe Yearbook ◽

10.1353/gyr.2011.0362 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 23-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ursula Mahlendorf

Keyword(s):

Child Abuse ◽

Object Relations ◽

Narrative Structure

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The Use of Marian Chace’s Technique Combined With in the Depth Dance Therapy Derived from the Jungian Model

Musik- Tanz und Kunsttherapie ◽

10.1026/0933-6885.15.4.197 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. 197-203

Author(s):

Penny Lewis†

Keyword(s):

Child Abuse ◽

Object Relations ◽

Dance Therapy ◽

Transformative Power ◽

Boundary Formation ◽

Inner Child ◽

Spiritual Consciousness ◽

Survival Mechanisms

Abstract. From my training with Marian Chace came much of the roots of my employment of dance therapy in my work. The use of empathic movement reflection assisted me in the development of the technique of somatic countertransference ( Lewis, 1984 , 1988 , 1992 ) and in the choreography of the symbiotic phase in object relations ( Lewis, 1983 , 1987a , 1988 , 1990 , 1992 ). Marian provided the foundation for assistance in separation and individuation through the use of techniques which stimulated skin (body) and external (kinespheric) boundary formation. Reciprocal embodied response and the use of thematic imaginal improvisations provided the foundation for the embodied personification of intrapsychic phenomena such as the internalized patterns, inner survival mechanisms, addictions, and the inner child. Chace’s model assisted in the development of structures for the remembering, re-experiencing, and healing of child abuse as well as the rechoreography of object relations. Finally, Marian Chace’s use of synchronistic group postural rhythmic body action provided access to the transformative power of ritual in higher stages of individuation and spiritual consciousness.

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