"Comprehensive, Combining, and Subtle": Ishmael's Philosophy of Connection in Melville's Moby-Dick

This paper explores the lived philosophy of Ishmael in Herman Melville’s epic, Moby-Dick, particularly as it contrasts with Captain Ahab. Furthermore, this paper examines how Ahab’s narcissism ushers him towards death, while Ishmael’s collectivism guides him towards life. While Ahab is obsessed with himself and his goal of killing Moby Dick, which leads to his own demise, Ishmael is focused on exploring people and their respective philosophies in order to express the infinite spiritual aspects of human life. Ishmael learns from his mistakes, listens to the perspectives of others, and searches for spirituality through various religious and secular means. The form of the novel mirrors its narrator’s wide and wandering curiosity, as Ishamel shares with the reader both the narrative story of the Pequod and worldly facts about the sperm whale. The novel’s form enhances Ishamel’s actions within the story, revealing a nuanced philosophy that values human connection and curiosity. While some scholars have made claims that Ishmael’s narrative style reflects his confusion or ambiguity, this paper argues that it is actually evidence of a life-sustaining philosophy, one which eventually saves Ishmael from being swallowed by the whirlpool caused by Ahab’s pride.

Where the Skin Meets

Over the last half century, the analysis of homoerotic themes present in the author’s novels has been a particularly generative subset of Melville studies. Among this body of research, the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby-Dick has proven to be a compelling avenue of research regarding modes of queer representation in an historical period wherein the open discussion of homosexuality was viewed as anywhere from taboo to illegal. This paper builds on the work of other Melville scholars, such as Caleb Crain and Kellen Bolt, in examining the ways in which 19th century ideas of race intersect with the representation of an eroticized male relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. I suggest that the particular lens of racialized eroticism through which 19th century white observers viewed Polynesian men inherently denies the potential for disavowal of same-gender attraction to the non-White subject. This denial necessarily reifies racial hierarchy by giving a White male participant in a homoerotic relationship the ability to dictate its boundaries. I argue that even if, as Bolt suggests, Ishmael’s relationship with Queequeg represents a rejection of 19th century American nativist sentiment, Ishmael retains the ability to distance himself from accusations of homoeroticism in a way that is not possible for Queequeg and his exoticized body. I conclude with an exploration of how the Victorian freak-show archetype of the tattooed man connects with Ishmael’s decision to tattoo himself and thus voluntary take on racializing signifiers within his contemporary context.

De cometas, ballenas y traductores: cuatro retraducciones activas de Moby-Dick en español

Este artículo aborda desde una perspectiva teórica y práctica el estudio de la retraducción de obras literarias. Para ello, se acude a las retraducciones publicadas en España de la novela Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851). El apartado teórico establece dos elementos de análisis novedosos en los estudios de la retraducción: i) el hecho y la explicación de que algunas de estas retraducciones aparecen en períodos de tiempo muy breves; y ii) los testimonios personales de los retraductores en relación con su trabajo como retraductores de una obra literaria determinada. El análisis de estos dos factores ayuda de manera decisiva a determinar si esas retraducciones son «activas» o «pasivas» (Pym 1998). El apartado práctico ofrece, en primer lugar, una panorámica histórica de las dieciocho retraducciones de Moby-Dick publicadas en España hasta el momento; y, después, analiza cuatro retraducciones activas de la novela aparecidas en España en un período de ocho años (2007-2014), empleando para ello los testimonios directos con que contamos de los cuatro retraductores que ilustran los orígenes, objetivos y supuestas aportaciones de cada una de esas cuatro versiones. El artículo concluye subrayando la importancia que se debe otorgar primero al conocimiento histórico de las diferentes retraducciones en períodos de tiempo determinados y, después, a los testimonios escritos de los retraductores sobre su trabajo en el caso de que estén disponibles para el investigador, como es el caso de este estudio.

What “A Smile of Fortune” Has To Hide: An Intertextual And Comparative Reconsideration of the Texture and Theme of Conrad’s Tale

The present article is part of a larger project on Conrad’s less known short fiction, the area of his writing which is largely undervalued, and even deprecated at times. The paper’s aim is to enhance the appreciation of “A Smile of Fortune,” by drawing attention to its “inner texture” as representative of Conrad’s “art of expression,” especially in view of the writer’s own belief in the supremacy of form over content as well as “suggestiveness” over “explicitness” in his fiction. To achieve this aim a New Critical (“close reading”), intertextual and comparative approaches to Conrad’s story have been adopted, involving nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literary texts, i.e., both those preceding and those following the publication of Conrad’s ’Twixt Land and Sea (1912) volume featuring the tale in question. The intertextual reading of “A Smile of Fortune” against Bernard Malamud’s short story “The Magic Barrel,” Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, with Light in August as a point of reference, reveals the workings in Conrad’s story of the modernist device of denegation, which, alongside antithesis and oxymoron, seems to be largely responsible for the tale’s contradictions and ambiguities, which should thus be perceived as the story’s asset rather than flaw. The textual evidence of Conrad’s tale, as well as its comparison with three short stories: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time,” seem to confirm the presence of the implications of the theme of incest in Conrad’s text, heretofore unrecognized in criticism. Overall, the foregoing analysis of “A Smile of Fortune” hopes to account for, if not disentangle, the story’s complex narratological meanderings and seemingly insoluble ambiguities, particularly as regards character and motive, naming Conrad rather than Faulkner the precursor of denegation.

An Eco-critical Analysis of Moby Dick

Moby Dick is well acknowledged as a world masterpiece by the American author Herman Melville. This paper attempts to analyze Melville’s Moby Dick by the theory of eco-criticism. In order to better approach the American society before the 1950s, the author aims to scrutinize the novel with eco-criticism from three such aspects as nature, society and spirit so that the present society can gain some insights in preventing and solving similar problems. Divided into several parts as follows, this paper introduces Melville and Moby Dick as well as eco-criticism first and then interprets the novel via eco-criticism in three aspects, and finally ends with its realistic significance as a conclusion.

Divine Justice and Sublime Suffering

This chapter shows how Melville draws on the book of Job to discuss issues of divine justice and human suffering. It argues that Melville uses the language and themes of Job to evaluate divine jurisprudence from the vantage point of the human plaintiff, celebrating human perseverance and indicting the arbitrariness of divinely mandated suffering. After sketching out the book of Job’s textual history, the chapter discusses in turn Mardi, Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and The Encantadas on these grounds, detailing how Melville uses typology and intertextual reference to examine the Bible and to apply his findings to comment on natural, social, and cultural phenomena. It concludes that Melville sees the book of Job as a story not of defiance and repentance but of the learning and growth that occur in precisely the moment when one’s preconceptions and expectations of reality are shattered.