Read complete books and articles on: Bartleby the Scrivener

Melville, Herman - 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature.

Early Life and Works

Melville, Herman - 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature.

Early Life and Works

Born into an impoverished family of distinguished Dutch and English colonial descent, Melville was 12 when his father died. He left school at 15, worked at a variety of jobs, and in 1839 signed on as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool, an experience reflected in his romance Redburn. In 1841–42 he spent 18 months on a whaler, but intolerable hardships on board caused him and a companion to escape from the ship at the Marquesas Islands. The two were captured by a tribe of cannibals, by whom they were well treated. After being rescued by an Australian whaler, Melville spent some time in Tahiti and other Pacific islands before shipping home in 1844.

The immediate results of his experiences were Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847), as well as Redburn (1849), all fresh, exuberant, and immensely popular romances. In 1847, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts. The popularity of his books brought him prosperity, business trips to Europe, and admission to literary circles in New York City. In 1850 he bought a farm near Pittsfield, Mass., and became friends with his neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne. The allegorical implications evident in his romances Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) and White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850) reached full development in Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851).

Moby-Dick

The story of a deranged whaling captain's obsessive voyage to find and destroy the great white whale that had ripped off his leg, the novel is at once an exciting sea story, a sociological critique of various American class and racial prejudices, a repository of information about whales and whaling, and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of good and evil, of man and his fate. The novel is heavily symbolic, and many critical formulations have been made as to the meaning of its central symbol, the great white whale Moby-Dick himself. Moby-Dick is greatly enhanced by Melville's rhythmic, rhetorical prose style. Although it is now considered one of the greatest of all novels, Moby-Dick was misunderstood and ill-received in its time. Readers were confused by the book's symbolism, and they failed to grasp Melville's complex view of the world.

Later Works and Life

Like Moby-Dick,Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852), a psychological study of guilt and frustrated good, was disregarded by the public. Disheartened by debts, ill health, and the failure to win an audience, Melville became absorbed in mysticism. He was unable to accept the optimism of transcendentalism, for he was always able to see the cruel as well as the beautiful in nature. Although he searched for a faith that would satisfy his yearning for the Absolute, he never found one. Melville continued to produce important works in The Piazza Tales (1856), a collection which includes "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby the Scrivener," and The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (1857), a pessimistic satire on materialism.

Melville was forced to sell his farm, and in 1866 he secured a poorly paying position in New York City as a district inspector of customs, a job he held for 19 years. His late works include the volumes of poetry Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) and John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) and the long poem Clarel (1876). However, he wrote no more fiction until his last years when he composed the posthumously published novella Billy Budd, Foretopman (1924), the tragedy of an innocent. Melville died in poverty and obscurity. Although neglected for many years, he was rediscovered around 1920 and has been enthusiastically studied by critics and scholars ever since. Many of his unpublished works were issued posthumously, notably The Apple Tree Table (1922), a collection of magazine sketches; Journal of a Visit to London and the Continent (1948); and Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant (1955).

Bibliography

See the authoritative ed. of his writings (15 vol., ed. by H. M. Hayford et al., 1968–93); his letters (ed. by M. R. Davis and W. H. Gilman, 1960); biographies by N. Arvin (1950, repr. 1972, 2002), L. Howard (1981), G. Wolff (1987), H. Parker (2 vol., 1996–2002), L. Robertson-Lorant (1996), E. Hardwick (2000), and A. Delbanco (2005); studies by M. Rogin (1983), N. Tolchin (1988), and W. Dimock (1989).

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10 of the Best Books and Articles on: Bartleby the Scrivener

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Four Short Novels ("Bartleby" begins on p. 1) » Read Now
by Herman Melville. 281 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
2.

Doing Justice to Bartleby, in ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly) » Read Now
by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. 19 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
3.

Law in Art: Melville's Major Fiction and Nineteenth-Century American Law (Chap. 6 "'Bartleby': Representation, Reproduction, and the Law") » Read Now
by Susan Weiner. 198 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
4.

Narrator of "Bartleby": The Christian-Humanist Acquaintance of John Jacob Astor, in Papers on Language & Literature » Read Now
by Thomas Dilworth. 26 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library
5.

The Narrator's Dilemma in "Bartleby the Scrivener": The Excellently Illustrated Re-statement of a Problem, in Studies in Short Fiction » Read Now
by Todd F. Davis. 9 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
6.

After the Whale: Melville in the Wake of Moby-Dick (Chap. 2 "Language and the Ascetic Body in Pierre and 'Bartleby'") » Read Now
by Clark Davis. 236 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

After the Whale contextualizes Herman Melville's short fiction and poetry by studying it in the company of the more familiar fiction of the 1850s and 1890s. The study focuses on Melville's vision of the purpose and function of language from Moby-Dick through Billy Budd with a special emphasis on how...
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After the Whale contextualizes Herman Melville's short fiction and poetry by studying it in the company of the more familiar fiction of the 1850s and 1890s. The study focuses on Melville's vision of the purpose and function of language from Moby-Dick through Billy Budd with a special emphasis on how language - in function and form - follows and depends on the function and form of the body, how Melville's attitude toward words echoes his attitude toward flesh.
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7.

Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to Delillo (Chap. 2 "Melville: Knowing Bartleby") » Read Now
by Arnold Weinstein. 349 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
8.

Correspondent Colorings: Melville in the Marketplace ("Subversive Sentiment in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'" begins on p. 181) » Read Now
by Sheila Post-Lauria. 276 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This innovative book makes a major contribution to the current revision of the American literary canon. Challenging the view of Melville as an isolated, alienated genius, Sheila Post-Lauria presents him not only as a writer keenly attuned to the popular culture of his day but also as one who...
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This innovative book makes a major contribution to the current revision of the American literary canon. Challenging the view of Melville as an isolated, alienated genius, Sheila Post-Lauria presents him not only as a writer keenly attuned to the popular culture of his day but also as one who considered reliance upon cultural materials fundamental to his creativity. Firmly grounded in the new scholarship on the history of nineteenth-century print culture and in studies of Melville's contemporaries, Correspondent Colorings provides a rereading of Melville's oeuvre that casts new light on masterpieces like Moby dick and ambiguous texts such as Benito Cereno, as well as lesser known magazine and the late poetry.
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9.

Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts ("Melville and John Vanderlyn: Ruin and Historical Fate from 'Bartleby' to Israel Potter" begins on p. 117) » Read Now
by Christopher Sten. 344 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Melville's interest in the visual arts and the translation of that interest into his writings is at the center of this new interdisciplinary study of one of America's most celebrated writers. Melville's lifelong engagement with the visual arts has been noted in other works, but only Savage Eye...
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Melville's interest in the visual arts and the translation of that interest into his writings is at the center of this new interdisciplinary study of one of America's most celebrated writers. Melville's lifelong engagement with the visual arts has been noted in other works, but only Savage Eye suggests the extraordinary depth and range of the author's multifaceted interest in the subject. Editor Christopher Sten has collected 13 essays from 12 specialists in the field to produce this ground-breaking study which connects Melville's writings with topics relating to the arts of painting, printmaking, sculpture, architecture, and landscape design, as well as art history. Sten's comprehensive introduction provides readers with a historical overview of the subject, detailing the many works of art Melville knew and commented upon at each stage of his career. He explains when and where in Melville's wanderings throughout America, Europe, and the Near East he saw these works, then describes how Melville made use of the life and work of these artists in his own fiction and poetry. The collection includes new essays on Moby Dick and J.M.W. Turner; Melville's fascination with Dutch genre painting; his appropriation of work by Cole and Vanderlyn for his magazine fiction; his use of early representations of the plague in Israel Potter; the relationship between the satirical cartoons of Daumier and the figures of The Confidence-Man; Timoleon's many artistic subjects; and the power of classical icons to shape the moral and aesthetic conflicts in Billy Budd. Also found here are theoretical essays on Melville and the picturesque; the modernism of Melville's aesthetic vision; his "anti-architectural"theory of literature; and his extensive reading in art history and art theory, from the classical to his own period. Savage Eye argues persuasively that the visual arts sources are comparable in importance to the literary arts i
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10.

Bartleby the Socratic, in Studies in Short Fiction » Read Now
by Andre Furlani. 21 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library