Introduction: Melville in Public

[...]for all of the suspicions that Melville's characters may harbor about the judgements of the public, his work has long provided the materials around which vibrant and varied publics have been constituted. For our third issue marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Leviathan, Melville in Pub...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Leviathan (Hempstead, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2023-10, Vol.25 (3), p.1-6
Main Authors: Greiman, Jennifer, Yothers, Brian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Artists
Capitalism
Collaboration
Demonstrations & protests
Humor
Intimacy
Melville, Herman (1819-1891)
Political power
Politics
Prints and printmaking
Robinson, Marilynne
Whales & whaling
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Summary:[...]for all of the suspicions that Melville's characters may harbor about the judgements of the public, his work has long provided the materials around which vibrant and varied publics have been constituted. For our third issue marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Leviathan, Melville in Public, we are extending the examination of Melville's reach from our summer 2023 issue on Digital Melville to take stock of Melville's place in visual art, literature, and public culture. [...]Castronovo, in his study of how Bartleby became the "patron saint" of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, highlights the political power of a failed analogy that cannot account for all experience (Castronovo 269). In every episode, Lavin and her guests find something that is urgent in the language and text of Moby-Dick, but beyond that, they insist on the urgency of finding humor and taking pleasure in Melville's art during a period of crisis. Peterson's richly illustrated essay does justice to the scope and scale of Sances's work, showing how Sances draws on Kent's visual language and the analysis of C.L.R. James to produce what Peterson calls an ark, or "catalog of Anthropocene themes: scenes of extraction and extinction; production, consumption, and waste; technological progress and environmental degradation, all presided over by a handful of America's most notorious tycoons—John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Leland Stanford, and Steve Jobs" (10).
ISSN:1525-6995
1750-1849
1750-1849
DOI:10.1353/lvn.2023.a913118