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Many writers in antebellum America sought to reinvent the Bible, but no one, Ilana Pardes argues, was as insistent as Melville on redefining biblical exegesis while doing so. In Moby-Dick he not only ventured to fashion a grand new inverted Bible in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume center stage, but also aspired to comment on every imaginable mode of biblical interpretation, calling for a radical reconsideration of the politics of biblical reception. In Melville's Bibles, Pardes traces Melville's response to a whole array of nineteenth-century exegetical writings—literary scriptures, biblical scholarship, Holy Land travel narratives, political sermons, and women's bibles. She shows how Melville raised with unparalleled verve the question of what counts as Bible and what counts as interpretation.
Presented as narratives of his own South Sea experiences, Melville's first two books had roused incredulity in many readers. Their disbelief, he declared, had been "the main inducement" in altering his plan for his third book, Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849). Melville wanted to exploit the "rich poetical material" of Polynesia and also to escape feeling "irked, cramped, & fettered" by a narrative of facts. "I began to feel . . . a longing to plume my pinions for a flight," he told his English publisher. This scholarly edition aims to present a text as close to the author's intention as surviving evidence permits. Based on collations of all editions publishing during Melville's lifetime, it incorporates author corrections and many emendations made by the present editors. This edition of Mardi is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
A classic account of mountain life, accurately portraying the people and lore of the Cumberland Mountains. Miles' familiarity with the mountain people--and her perception of the importance of women, especially older women--allows her to illustrate their way of life in a personal and realistic manner ". . . gives us an extraordinary insight into the personal relationships of the mountain lore, signs, rhymes, omens, tales, even the development of the mountain music. She presents the strength of religious beliefs along with the emotionalism and simplistic tradition of 'the old-time religion.'" --The Southern Quarterly . Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) also wrote numerous poems and short stories that appeared in such publications of the period as Harpers Monthly, Century, and Lippincott's.
Despite its widespread popularity in antebellum America, phrenology has rarely been taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon. Charles Colbert seeks to redress this neglect by demonstrating the important contributions the theory made to artistic developmen
The eminent Coleridgean and Romantic scholar Morton D. Paley here examines the twenty-four portraits known to have been painted of Coleridge during his life. Illustrated with reproductions throughout.
American Gothic Art and Architecture in the Age of Romantic Literature analyses the influence of British Gothic novels and historical romances on American art and architecture in the Romantic era.
For centuries Italy has been the destination of a lifetime for an endless stream of travellers. This book – focussing on the experience of contemporary Australian intellectuals – explores an aspect as of yet scarcely studied within the global phenomenon of travel to Italy, and discovers an image of the country starkly different from the one that prevailed in previous writings. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards there has been a sizeable output of books by Australian writers set in or about Italy. After a meticulous examination of these works, Roberta Trapè has selected and analysed those that she considers the most interesting examples of Australians’ continuing fascination with Italy – works of Jeffrey Smart and Shirley Hazzard, and of Robert Dessaix and Peter Robb. Examining the ways the four authors describe Italian places, Imaging Italy looks into what it is that continues to attract Australian writers and artists to the country, and tries to detect new trends in their attitude towards it. The image of Italy that emerges from the most recent works is, no doubt, a superb picture – not flattering but certainly not false – of its contemporary times.
Examines how secular transformations of religious ideas have helped to shape the style and substance of works by American writers, filmmakers and artists from Catholic backgrounds.
Melville's long poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876) was the last full-length book he published. Until the mid-twentieth century even the most partisan of Melville's advocates hesitated to endure a four-part poem of 150 cantos of almost 18,000 lines, about a naïve American named Clarel, on pilgrimage through the Palestinian ruins with a provocative cluster of companions. But modern critics have found Clarel a much better poem than was ever realized. Robert Penn Warren called it a precursor of The Waste Land. It abounds with revelations of Melville's inner life. Most strikingly, it is argued that the character Vine is a portrait of Melville's friend Hawthorne. Based on the only edition published during Melville's lifetime, this scholarly edition adopts thirty-nine corrections from a copy marked by Melville and incorporates 154 emendations by the present editors, an also includes a section of related documents and extensive discussions. This scholarly edition is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).