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Playful learning : Melville's artful art in Moby-Dick

journal contribution
posted on 2006-01-01, 00:00 authored by B Edwards
It remains one of the great ironies of American literary history that Melville's Moby-Dick struggled so long for critical and popular recognition. It is a peculiar text (but, then, so are Hawthorne's novels), a romance of the whale fishery that involves such explorations of language itself, of words, metaphor, symbol, allegory and the processes (and significance) of narrative construction. This article analyses its 'peculiarities' as fundamental indicators of Melville's 'playful art' to argue the usefulness of a concept of 'play' to its appreciation. That Moby-Dick is allusive and multi-layered is well known. But for what apparent purpose and to what effect? Here, a claim is made that Melville simultaneously constructs and deconstructs meaning by demonstrating that things ('in complex subjects') never come simply or singly. The later Barthes and Derrida become part of this ship's crew and Moby-Dick is a postmodernist novel avant la lettre.

History

Journal

Australasian journal of American studies : AJAS

Volume

25

Issue

1

Pagination

1 - 13

Publisher

Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association

Location

Sydney, N.S.W.

ISSN

1838-9554

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal; C Journal article

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