Melville: The Making of the PoetNorthwestern University Press, 2008 - 238 sidor “Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or for poetry in blubber?” the London John Bull remarked in October of 1851. And yet, the reviewer went on, “few books which professedly deal in metaphysics, or claim the parentage of the muses, contain as much true philosophy and as much genuine poetry as the tale of the Pequod's whaling expedition.” A decade and a half before surprising the world with a book of Civil war poetry, Melville was already confident of what was “poetic” in his prose. As Hershel Parker demonstrates in this book, Melville was steeped in poetry long before he called himself a poet. |
Innehåll
Melvilles Lost Books and the Trajectory of His Career as Poet | 3 |
How Critics Prepared Melville to Think of Himself as a Poet | 11 |
Melville as Hearer and Reciter of Poetry | 23 |
The Omnipresence of Poetry 1820s1848 | 31 |
The Renewed Power of Poetry in Melvilles Life 18491856 | 67 |
The Status of Poetry and the Temptation of Flunkeyism | 101 |
A Nonpartisan Becoming a Poet During the Risorgimento | 111 |
Melvilles Progress as Poet 1857? to May 1860 | 125 |
Melvill When He Thought He Was a Published Poet | 145 |
His Verse Stil Unpublished Melville Defines Himself as Poet 18611862 | 153 |
Melvilles Second Volume of Poems | 189 |
Epilogue | 205 |
Notes | 207 |
Works Cited | 217 |
225 | |
Possible Contents of Poems 1860 | 135 |