ENG 880, Seminar: Melville’s Moby-Dick
Glen Johnson
The Catholic University of America
Text:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Norton Critical Ed., 2nd ed. W. W. Norton, 2002.
Useful guides and collections [selective]:
American Literary Scholarship: An Annual (yearly chapter on Melville).
Moby-Dick, Norton Critical Ed., 1st ed., 1967.
Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, 2 vols. (Johns Hopkins, 1996, 2002).
Hershel Parker, Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern, 2013).
Approaches to Teaching Melville’s Moby-Dick, ed. Martin Bickman. MLA 1985.
Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Robert S. Levine. Cambridge, 1998.
Cambridge Introduction to Herman Melville, ed. Kevin Hayes (Cambridge, 2007).
A Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Wyn Kelley (Blackwell, 2006).
Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel
Parker. G. K. Hall, 1992.
Critical Response to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Greenwood
Press, 1994.
Herman Melville A to Z, ed. Carl E. Rollyson. Facts on File, 2001.
Herman Melville: Critical Assessments, ed. A. Robert Lee, 4 vols. (Helm, 2001).
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick, Columbia Critical Guide, ed. Nick Selby. Columbia,
1998.
Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker
(Cambridge, 2009).
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick [selected essays], ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House,
1986.
Historical Guide to Herman Melville, ed. Giles Gunn (Oxford, 2005).
Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts, 1851-1970, ed. Hershel Parker and
Harrison Hayford (Norton, 1970).
New Essays on Moby-Dick, ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Cambridg, 1986.
The Recognition of Herman Melville: Selected Criticism Since 1846, ed. Hershel Parker
(Michigan, 1967).
Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick, ed. Michael T. Gilmore. PrenticeHall, 1977.
Themes, topics, ideas for discussion and investigation:
Melville’s biography and Moby-Dick
Composition of Moby-Dick
Relationship of Moby-Dick to Melville’s earlier works
Whaleship Essex and Owen Chase’s narrative
Critical reception of Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick and the canon
Matthiessen’s American Renaissance, the Cold War, and canonization
Genre and Moby-Dick
Romance, anatomy, epic
Cetology and narrative
Style and diction
Melville and contemporaries:
Hawthorne
Emerson
Publishers, editors, etc.
Literary and other influences:
Shakespeare
The Bible
Milton
Goethe
Robert Burton, Dante, Montaigne, Carlyle, Mary Shelley
Romanticism, the Romantic era & romantic themes
Nature
Transcendentalism
Individualism
Reform
Philosophical-Religious issues:
Gnosticism
Platonism
Calvinism
Manichaeism
Pantheism
Quakerism
Political culture of mid-19th century America
Democracy
Slavery
Race
Reform
Industrialization in America
Science and pseudo-science: phrenology, hieroglyphics, etc.
Theoretical approaches to Moby-Dick
Myth and archetype
Formalism
Semiotic
Post-structuralism and deconstruction
New Historicism
Sociological
Feminist
Queer, Gay studies, masculinity studies
Ecological
Phenomenology
Psychological and psychoanalytical
Reader-response and reception theory
Speech-act and linguistic theories
Approaches to teaching Moby-Dick
Classroom approaches
Critical guides to Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick in the arts, etc.
Fictional works related to and influenced by Melville
Visual art and Moby-Dick
Film and dramatic versions
Performing versions
Audio versions