“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him?
Rather than focusing on Ahab’s or Ishmael’s obsession with the White Whale, in my essay I wish to explore the reasons why critics have become obsessed with Ishmael. This critical obsession began to emerge in the 1940s, after the Melville Revival, when, as Clare Spark has shown, critics were mostly “...
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European Association for American Studies
2023
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:1e882c79664d4e27b64b4a68e33a0935 2023-11-05T03:45:25+01:00 “The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? Giorgio Mariani 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20738 https://doaj.org/article/1e882c79664d4e27b64b4a68e33a0935 EN eng European Association for American Studies http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/20738 https://doaj.org/toc/1991-9336 1991-9336 doi:10.4000/ejas.20738 https://doaj.org/article/1e882c79664d4e27b64b4a68e33a0935 European Journal of American Studies, Vol 19, Iss 1 (2023) Herman Melville Moby-Dick Ishmael literary theory cultural criticism American literary history History America E-F United States E151-889 Sociology (General) HM401-1281 article 2023 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20738 2023-10-08T00:37:24Z Rather than focusing on Ahab’s or Ishmael’s obsession with the White Whale, in my essay I wish to explore the reasons why critics have become obsessed with Ishmael. This critical obsession began to emerge in the 1940s, after the Melville Revival, when, as Clare Spark has shown, critics were mostly “Ahab-obsessed.” The emergence of Ishmael-centric readings of Moby-Dick is usually connected to the rise of the Cold War, but I intend to suggest that—important as the search for a cultural consensus engendered by the aftermath of the war undoubtedly was—other factors help explain the critics’ understanding of Moby-Dick as, primarily, “Ishmael’s mighty book.” In particular, the concurrent rediscovery of Henry James’s aesthetics of the novel explains why critical attention shifted to the narrator’s perspective, ideologically constructed as a space of “freedom.” But while, for the most part, I employ the term ‘obsession’ in its commonsensical meaning of being intensely preoccupied with someone or something, in the last part of my essay the etymology of the term also comes into play. The word derives from the Latin obsessio, the past-participle stem of obsidere, “to besiege.” So, obsession can also be understood as a siege, a blockade. Indeed, of late, for some critics Ishmael has become a sort of obstacle to the proper understanding of the text. The “discovery” of Ishmael in the 1940s and especially the 1950s seems to have solved a number of both formal and ideological problems. Yet nowadays not only have some readers (usually identified as the New Americanists) themselves “besieged” Ishmael both as character and narrator, but others have actually sought, if not to get rid of him altogether, then to demote him to a figure of secondary importance. The story I wish to tell reveals that the recently much debated dichotomy between “ideological” and more “personal” reading may ultimately be untenable. Article in Journal/Newspaper White whale Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles European journal of American studies 19-1 |
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Open Polar |
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Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
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ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Herman Melville Moby-Dick Ishmael literary theory cultural criticism American literary history History America E-F United States E151-889 Sociology (General) HM401-1281 |
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Herman Melville Moby-Dick Ishmael literary theory cultural criticism American literary history History America E-F United States E151-889 Sociology (General) HM401-1281 Giorgio Mariani “The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
topic_facet |
Herman Melville Moby-Dick Ishmael literary theory cultural criticism American literary history History America E-F United States E151-889 Sociology (General) HM401-1281 |
description |
Rather than focusing on Ahab’s or Ishmael’s obsession with the White Whale, in my essay I wish to explore the reasons why critics have become obsessed with Ishmael. This critical obsession began to emerge in the 1940s, after the Melville Revival, when, as Clare Spark has shown, critics were mostly “Ahab-obsessed.” The emergence of Ishmael-centric readings of Moby-Dick is usually connected to the rise of the Cold War, but I intend to suggest that—important as the search for a cultural consensus engendered by the aftermath of the war undoubtedly was—other factors help explain the critics’ understanding of Moby-Dick as, primarily, “Ishmael’s mighty book.” In particular, the concurrent rediscovery of Henry James’s aesthetics of the novel explains why critical attention shifted to the narrator’s perspective, ideologically constructed as a space of “freedom.” But while, for the most part, I employ the term ‘obsession’ in its commonsensical meaning of being intensely preoccupied with someone or something, in the last part of my essay the etymology of the term also comes into play. The word derives from the Latin obsessio, the past-participle stem of obsidere, “to besiege.” So, obsession can also be understood as a siege, a blockade. Indeed, of late, for some critics Ishmael has become a sort of obstacle to the proper understanding of the text. The “discovery” of Ishmael in the 1940s and especially the 1950s seems to have solved a number of both formal and ideological problems. Yet nowadays not only have some readers (usually identified as the New Americanists) themselves “besieged” Ishmael both as character and narrator, but others have actually sought, if not to get rid of him altogether, then to demote him to a figure of secondary importance. The story I wish to tell reveals that the recently much debated dichotomy between “ideological” and more “personal” reading may ultimately be untenable. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Giorgio Mariani |
author_facet |
Giorgio Mariani |
author_sort |
Giorgio Mariani |
title |
“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
title_short |
“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
title_full |
“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
title_fullStr |
“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
title_full_unstemmed |
“The Key to it All”: Why Are We Obsessed with Ishmael, and Are Likely to Continue to Be Obsessed with Him? |
title_sort |
“the key to it all”: why are we obsessed with ishmael, and are likely to continue to be obsessed with him? |
publisher |
European Association for American Studies |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20738 https://doaj.org/article/1e882c79664d4e27b64b4a68e33a0935 |
genre |
White whale |
genre_facet |
White whale |
op_source |
European Journal of American Studies, Vol 19, Iss 1 (2023) |
op_relation |
http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/20738 https://doaj.org/toc/1991-9336 1991-9336 doi:10.4000/ejas.20738 https://doaj.org/article/1e882c79664d4e27b64b4a68e33a0935 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.20738 |
container_title |
European journal of American studies |
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19-1 |
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1781707791283519488 |