Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville

Michael Rogin

University of California Press, Apr 18, 1985 - Literary Criticism - 354 pages

This book makes several claims which ought to be stated at the outset: that Herman Melville is a recorder and interpreter of American society whose work is comparable to that of the great nineteenth-century European realists; that there was crisis of bourgeois society at midcentury on both continents, but that in America it entered politics by way of slavery and race rather than class; that the crisis called into question the ideal realm of liberal political freedom, and also that Melville was particularly sensitive to the American crisis because of the political importance of his clan and the political history of his family

Contents

• The Red Rover: 3
• PARTI POLITICS: 15
• and Christians: 42
• SOCIETY: 153
• Class Struggles in America: 187
• and Confidence Men: 221
• THE STATE: 257
• The Somers Mutiny and Billy Budd: 288
• Notes: 319
• Index: 349

Bibliographic information

• Title: Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville; Volume 716 of California paperback edition
• Author: Michael Rogin
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of California Press, 1985
• ISBN: 0520051785, 9780520051782
• Length: 354 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General