Abstract:This essay approaches Melville's intertextual dealings in The Confidence-Man as a nonlinear and veering practice in which hermeneutics turns away from its telos. Rather than tracing the literary filiations of the novel, I explore the ghostliness—and often anamorphic character—of literary allusions as well as the multiple trajectories involved in this transformative process. Intertextuality manifests itself as a spectral force and heterogeneous realm of experience that fuels the reader's interpretive activity. This space of critical uncertainty opens up the possibility for various allusions to be entangled and to haunt each other, one potential reference morphing into another one, should one look at the text from a slightly different angle. Intertextuality in The Confidence-Man also disrupts the linearity of reading as it invites readers to veer back to earlier chapters of the novel or to reassess canonical texts in light of their Melvillean avatars. Ultimately, it seems that veering is a critical vantage point that avoids the binary opposition between symptomatic reading and surface reading, the suspicion that infuses the whole narrative attesting to its agency and unpredictability.
{"title":"Displacing Origin: Melville's Intertextual Veerings in The Confidence-Man; His Masquerade","authors":"Ronan Ludot-Vlasak","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay approaches Melville's intertextual dealings in The Confidence-Man as a nonlinear and veering practice in which hermeneutics turns away from its telos. Rather than tracing the literary filiations of the novel, I explore the ghostliness—and often anamorphic character—of literary allusions as well as the multiple trajectories involved in this transformative process. Intertextuality manifests itself as a spectral force and heterogeneous realm of experience that fuels the reader's interpretive activity. This space of critical uncertainty opens up the possibility for various allusions to be entangled and to haunt each other, one potential reference morphing into another one, should one look at the text from a slightly different angle. Intertextuality in The Confidence-Man also disrupts the linearity of reading as it invites readers to veer back to earlier chapters of the novel or to reassess canonical texts in light of their Melvillean avatars. Ultimately, it seems that veering is a critical vantage point that avoids the binary opposition between symptomatic reading and surface reading, the suspicion that infuses the whole narrative attesting to its agency and unpredictability.","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"280 1","pages":"53 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74982201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Argument by Analogy: White-Jacket and Democracy in Melville's Anatomy","authors":"J. Bryant","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"18 1","pages":"118 - 121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90096355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brian D Yothers, Wyn Kelley, M. Edwards, J. Bryant, Cody Marrs, R. Levine
{"title":"Melville's Anatomies Two Decades Later: A Forum","authors":"Brian D Yothers, Wyn Kelley, M. Edwards, J. Bryant, Cody Marrs, R. Levine","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"160 1","pages":"112 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76981476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Love and Depth in the American Novel: From Stowe to James by Ashley C. Barnes (review)","authors":"S. Samuels","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"35 1","pages":"101 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75816929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay reads Billy Budd, Sailor as an exploration of democracy itself understood as a material, pragmatic, and regulated practice. Language is adrift in Billy Budd, and the "vagrancy" of the novella's "verbal reverberations" (Royle) are not mere testimony to Melville's poetic talent. The murmur and rumor that disseminate across the Bellipotent are so many signs that run up against the ship's institutional and legal structure and call into question the groundwork of an American state. Shifting the locus of Billy Budd's politics from plot and character to the materiality of language, this essay shows how the practice of grappling with matter, be it the materiality of bodies, letters, or the phenomenality of politics, is the site of Melville's aesthetic practice of democracy. In this pragmatic engagement with forms, Melville challenges the opposition between democratic life and democratic government through a self-reflexive evolutive handling of forms by those who constitute themselves as a demos. Melville's democracy, in that sense, not unlike Melville's text, is not fugitive but critical, grounded in its capacity to consistently transform itself.
{"title":"Murmur, Mutter, Matter: Verbal Veerings and the Practice of Democracy in Billy Budd, Sailor","authors":"Cécile Roudeau","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay reads Billy Budd, Sailor as an exploration of democracy itself understood as a material, pragmatic, and regulated practice. Language is adrift in Billy Budd, and the \"vagrancy\" of the novella's \"verbal reverberations\" (Royle) are not mere testimony to Melville's poetic talent. The murmur and rumor that disseminate across the Bellipotent are so many signs that run up against the ship's institutional and legal structure and call into question the groundwork of an American state. Shifting the locus of Billy Budd's politics from plot and character to the materiality of language, this essay shows how the practice of grappling with matter, be it the materiality of bodies, letters, or the phenomenality of politics, is the site of Melville's aesthetic practice of democracy. In this pragmatic engagement with forms, Melville challenges the opposition between democratic life and democratic government through a self-reflexive evolutive handling of forms by those who constitute themselves as a demos. Melville's democracy, in that sense, not unlike Melville's text, is not fugitive but critical, grounded in its capacity to consistently transform itself.","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"1 1","pages":"70 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89877936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Veerword: In Lieu of a Preface","authors":"N. Royle","doi":"10.1353/lvn.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lvn.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36222,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan (Germany)","volume":"6 1","pages":"29 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88800889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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