Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare And the Melville Revival.

Clare Spark

Kent State University Press, 2006 - Literary Criticism - 730 pages

In this interdisciplinary study of the development of institutional censorship, Clare Spark explores the complexities of 20th-century American cultural politics through the protagonists of the Melville Revival. She investigates closely the history of theRevival and its key critics, who manipulated Melville's life and writings in the service of their own particular social and political agendas. Spark's assertions are based on her exploration of either newly opened or previously unexplored archival materials of leading Melville scholars -- Raymond Weaver, Charles Olson, Henry A. Murray, and Jay Leyda. In addressing the distinction between what she calls the radical and conservative Enlightenment -- the conservative masquerading as progressive its attempt to reconcile scientific truth and social order -- Spark makes her way through Melville's often confusing and contradictory texts and examines the disputes within Melville scholarship, which often center on the mesmerizing figure of Ahab as either a democratic hero or a totalitarian dictator, corresponding to the rival epistemologies of modern society.

What people are saying

Review: Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival

User Review  - Derek Murphy - Goodreads

If you're doing research on the topic, there are several not to be missed insights in this book. While lacking the holistic narrative and structure of contemporary popular non-fiction, since when have we expected that from academic writing?

Review: Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival

User Review  - Ben - Goodreads

I think this book was supposed to examine the professional and personal writings of the key figures of the Melville Revival and expose their conservative bias. I'm really not sure what it is I just ...

Contents

• Introduction: 3
• The Moderate Response to NineteenthCentury Radicalism American Literature and the Progressives: 30
• The Fatal Line Who Was Isabel? What Was His Problem?: 81
• Melville and the Radical Puritans: 139
• The Modern Artist as Red Specter An irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress: 181
• Tracing Their Old Courses Again The Melville Revival 19191953: 203
• The Boulevard of Broken Dreams Raymond M Weaver and the Melville Revival 19191935: 205
• Pluralism in One Perfectly Happy Family 19261953 A Peep at Apes and Angels: 239
• A Change of Clowns Film Noir Phasing Out the Weaver Synthesis: 327
• Melville Ahab and the JewishAmerican Hitler: 383
• White Rot in the Melville Industry: 385
• After the Revolution The Racial Discourse of Ethnopluralism: 432
• Repunctuating the Melville Revival A New Map a Pause and a Tour through the Archives: 453
• Notes: 565
• Selected Bibliography: 695
• Index: 715

Bibliographic information

• Title: Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare And the Melville Revival.
• Author: Clare Spark
• Edition: 2, illustrated
• Publisher: Kent State University Press, 2006
• ISBN: 0873388887, 9780873388887
• Length: 730 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General; Literary Criticism / Books & Reading; Literary Criticism / Reference