Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Herman Melville and the American Calling: The Fiction after Moby-Dick, 1851-1857

Herman Melville and the American Calling: The Fiction after Moby-Dick, 1851-1857

Spanos, William V.

Paperback

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0791475646
ISBN13: 9780791475645
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Jul 1 2009
Pages: 294
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.90
Language: English

Argues that Herman Melville's later work anticipates the resurgence of an American exceptionalist ethos underpinning the U.S.-led global war on terror.

Oriented by the new Americanist perspective, this book constitutes a rereading of Herman Melville's most prominent fiction after Moby-Dick. In contrast to prior readings of this fiction, William V. Spanos's interpretation takes as its point of departure the theme of spectrality precipitated by the metaphor of orphanage-disaffiliation from the symbolic fatherland, on the one hand, and the myth of American exceptionalism on the other-that emerged as an abiding motif in Melville's creative imagination. This book voices an original argument about Melville's status as an American writer, and foregrounds Melville's remarkable anticipation and critique of the exceptionalism that continues to drive American policy in the post-9/11 era.

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