Screen LibrarySacred uncertainty : religious difference and the shape of Melville's career /
Herman Melville's oeuvre sustains a fundamental tension among self, society, and others. Sacred Uncertainty explores religious difference that arises from these many voices, both within American culture and around the world. Melville's work is notably shot through with allusions to other w...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Northwestern University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Evanston, Illinois : |
| Publication Dates: | 2015. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
Herman Melville's oeuvre sustains a fundamental tension among self, society, and others. Sacred Uncertainty explores religious difference that arises from these many voices, both within American culture and around the world. Melville's work is notably shot through with allusions to other writers and thinkers, whom he regarded as his truest interlocutors - the figures of genius from whom he received, as he eloquently stated it in "Hawthorne and His Mosses," a "shock of recognition." There is almost certainly no more concrete or reliable way to get at Melville's affirmations of (and arguments with) these interlocutors than in the markings and annotations that appear in his copies of many of their works, so Yothers examines Melville's marginalia for clues to Melville's thinking about self, others, and difference. His interrogations yield a richer understanding of one of the more vexing aspects of the great American. |
| Carrier Form: | xii, 244 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-240) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780810130715 0810130718 9780810131798 081013179X 9780810130722 0810130726 |
| Index Number: | PS2387 |
| CLC: | I712.064 |
| Call Number: | I712.064/Y66 |
| Contents: |
Introduction: The sacredness of uncertainty -- Melville's communion of solitude : reading and marginalia -- Landlessness : religious difference around the globe, Typee to Moby-Dick -- "Poor Richard ain't a dunker" : mapping American religious difference, Pierre to The confidence-man -- "Conflict of convictions" : remapping religious difference in Battle-pieces -- All souls : Clarel, religious pluralism, and Unitarianism -- "I too am uncertain" : the doubtful testament of Billy Budd and Melville's later poetry. |