The private Melville / Philip Young.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Young, Philip, 1918-1991.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Criticism and interpretation.

Melville, Herman.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xii, 163 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, [1993]

Summary:

The Private Melville demonstrates how great a role his profound sense of privacy played in Melville's life and work. Secrets he was careful never to reveal are unmasked by Philip Young. Privacy, as it appears to Melville here, is of three types. First are family matters the public had no business knowing about, such as the life story of a secret half-sister; next the story of the life of a cousin, Priscilla, model for the heroine of his novel Pierre, who scandalously "marries" her half-brother; and then a history testing a rash claim made by Melville regarding the lineage of "hundreds" of ordinary New England families. The second type concerns four Berkshire Tales that depend heavily on "private jokes", and thus have secret meaning that escaped the editors who printed them and continue to evade critics and scholars. The third kind deals with two "fictions" so little understood that the meaning might as well be secret: a speech of Ahab's, which is called the "spiritual climax" of Moby-Dick; and Melville's very last fiction, "Daniel Orme", a self-portrait in which he has gone pretty much unrecognized.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0271008571

OCLC:

25872689