An Artist in the Rigging: The Early Work of Herman Melville - Hardcover

Dillingham, William B.

9780820302768: An Artist in the Rigging: The Early Work of Herman Melville

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820302767 ISBN 13: 9780820302768

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1996

An Artist in the Rigging is a study of Herman Melville's early novels--Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, and White-Jacket. The author considers these fictions from the standpoint of thematic relationship rather than of chronological development. He shows that while the five hero-narrators are separate and distinct entities, they have much in common and can be seen as representing different facets of an emergent composite hero-from the sensitive and restless young man who leaves home to search hungrily for experience, to the wanderer immersed in a deep probing of himself and his world. The hero's thirst for psychological independence--what comes to be his overriding ambition--is never satisfied, and destruction becomes inevitable, culminating in a paradoxical "apotheosis" in which the narrator-hero achieves this independence, but only at the expense of his humanity.

Dillingham persuasively demonstrates the interrelated qualities of these five novels, and in so doing he shows that the young Melville was a far greater literary artist than he gave himself credit for being. This fiction constitutes a powerful achievement in richness of texture, range of effect, and depth of characterization, as An Artist in the Rigging makes clear.

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About the Author:

William B. Dillingham is Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, at Emory University. His books include four studies of Herman Melville: "Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856"; "An Artist in the Rigging: The Early Work of Herman Melville"; "Melville's Later Novels"; and "Melville and His Circle: The Last Years" (all Georgia).

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