Pub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197585566.003.0002
D. Schlarb
This chapter shows how Melville draws on the book of Job to discuss issues of divine justice and human suffering. It argues that Melville uses the language and themes of Job to evaluate divine jurisprudence from the vantage point of the human plaintiff, celebrating human perseverance and indicting the arbitrariness of divinely mandated suffering. After sketching out the book of Job’s textual history, the chapter discusses in turn Mardi, Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and The Encantadas on these grounds, detailing how Melville uses typology and intertextual reference to examine the Bible and to apply his findings to comment on natural, social, and cultural phenomena. It concludes that Melville sees the book of Job as a story not of defiance and repentance but of the learning and growth that occur in precisely the moment when one’s preconceptions and expectations of reality are shattered.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197585566.003.0004
D. Schlarb
This chapter argues that the book of Ecclesiastes helps Melville fathom the limits of wisdom philosophy. Ecclesiastes stresses the need to temper the idealism that underpins the perennial search for divine wisdom with the expediencies of daily life in the world. It is a meta-text that reflects critically on the wisdom project. Having found American culture to be fundamentally opposed to wisdom axioms (cf. Chapter 2), Melville, as this chapter shows, begins to push back against some of the skepticism in Solomon’s “despondent philosophy,” while maintaining the fundamental usefulness of its contemplative outlook on life. The works covered here—Redburn, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and the poetry collection Battle-Pieces—all depict individuals caught in the hermeneutical conundrum of applying wisdom teachings to the situations they find themselves in. Melville ultimately winds up embracing the wisdom axiom of moderation through contemplative discernment.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-21DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197585566.003.0003
D. Schlarb
This chapter explores Melville’s commentary on the collection of aphorisms known as the book of Proverbs and how he responds to its central propositions: fear of God as a prerequisite for attaining wisdom, the dichotomy between wisdom and folly, and the antinomian problem of God as the author of evil. Proverbs, it argues, enables Melville to frame his contemplation of theology and skepticism by confronting evil in its numerous guises as ontological fact. Because proverbs are portable and pragmatic, they allow Melville to comment politically on contemporary American reality (faith, economics, political and cultural institutions). The chapter discusses Mardi, “The Lightning-Rod Man,” The Confidence-Man, and Billy Budd, showing how proverbs initially connote revolutionary political potential in Melville’s work but soon are rendered ineffectual and used only to indict American political, economic, and cultural industries for successfully conspiring to purge wisdom from all personal interaction and jurisprudence.
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