Melville : fashioning in modernity / Stephen Matterson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Matterson, Stephen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Melville, Herman.

Civilization, Modern, in literature.

Clothing and dress in literature.

Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Melville: Fashioning in Modernity considers all of the major fiction with a concentration on lesser-known work, and provides a radically fresh approach to Melville, focusing on: clothing as socially symbolic; dress, power and class; the transgressive nature of dress; inappropriate clothing; the meaning of uniform; the multiplicity of identity that dress may represent; anxiety and modernity. The representation of clothing in the fiction is central to some of Melville's major themes; the relation between private and public identity, social inequality and how this is maintained; the relation between power, justice and authority; the relation between the "civilized" and the "savage." Frequently clothing represents the malleability of identity (its possibilities as well as its limitations), represents writing itself, as well as becoming indicative of the crisis of modernity. Clothing also becomes a trope for Melville's representations of authorship and of his own scene of writing. Melville: Fashioning in Modernity also encompasses identity in transition, making use of the examination of modernity by theorists such as Anthony Giddens, as well as on theories of figures such as the dandy. In contextualizing Melville's interest in clothing, a variety of other works and writers is considered; works such as Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, and novelists such as Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Jack London, and George Orwell. The book has at its core a consideration of the scene of writing and the publishing history of each text."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note:

Introduction: Herman Melville's blue-jean career

Chapter One: So unspeakably significant: Melville, Hawthorne and the shawls

Chapter Two: A very strange compound indeed: Carlyle, Redburn and White-Jacket

Chapter Three: He was an European, and had Cloaths on: Typee.

Chapter Four: The dress befitted the fate: Israel Potter's Lives

Chapter Five: These buttons that we wear: Billy Budd.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781623563677

1623563674

9781628927115

1628927119

9781623560553

1623560551

OCLC:

881429642