The errant art of Moby-Dick : the canon, the Cold War, and the struggle for American studies

William V. Spanos

In "The Errant Art of """Moby-Dick,"" one of America's most distinguished critics reexamines Melville's monumental novel and turns the occasion into a meditation on the history and implications of canon formation. In "Moby-Dick"--a work virtually ignored and discredited at the time of its publication--William V. Spanos uncovers a text remarkably suited as a foundation for a "New Americanist" critique of the ideology based on Puritan origins that was codified in the canon established by "Old Americanist" critics from F. O. Matthiessen to Lionel Trilling. But Spanos also shows, with the novel still as his focus, the limitations of this "New Americanist" discourse and its failure to escape the totalizing imperial perspective it finds in its predecessor.<br>Combining Heideggerian ontology with a sociopolitical perspective derived primarily from Foucault, the reading of "Moby-Dick" that forms the center of this book demonstrates that the traditional identification of Melville's novel as a "romance" renders it complicitous in the discourse of the Cold War. At the same time, Spanos shows how New Americanist criticism overlooks the degree to which "Moby-Dick" anticipates not only America's self-representation as the savior of the world against communism, but also the emergent postmodern and anti-imperial discourse deployed against such an image. Spanos's critique reveals the extraordinary relevance of Melville's novel as a post-Cold War text, foreshadowing not only the self-destructive end of the historical formation of the American cultural identity in the genocidal assault on Vietnam, but also the reactionary labeling of the current era as "the end of history."<br>This provocative and challenging study presents not only a new view of the development of literary history in the United States, but a devastating critique of the genealogy of ideology in the American cultural establishment.<br>

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In "The Errant Art of """Moby-Dick,"" one of America's most distinguished critics reexamines Melville's monumental novel and turns the occasion into a meditation on the history and implications of canon formation. In "Moby-Dick"--a work virtually ignored and discredited at the time of its publication--William V. Spanos uncovers a text remarkably suited as a foundation for a "New Americanist" critique of the ideology based on Puritan origins that was codified in the canon established by "Old Americanist" critics from F. O. Matthiessen to Lionel Trilling. But Spanos also shows, with the novel still as his focus, the limitations of this "New Americanist" discourse and its failure to escape the totalizing imperial perspective it finds in its predecessor.<br>Combining Heideggerian ontology with a sociopolitical perspective derived primarily from Foucault, the reading of "Moby-Dick" that forms the center of this book demonstrates that the traditional identification of Melville's novel as a "romance" renders it complicitous in the discourse of the Cold War. At the same time, Spanos shows how New Americanist criticism overlooks the degree to which "Moby-Dick" anticipates not only America's self-representation as the savior of the world against communism, but also the emergent postmodern and anti-imperial discourse deployed against such an image. Spanos's critique reveals the extraordinary relevance of Melville's novel as a post-Cold War text, foreshadowing not only the self-destructive end of the historical formation of the American cultural identity in the genocidal assault on Vietnam, but also the reactionary labeling of the current era as "the end of history."<br>This provocative and challenging study presents not only a new view of the development of literary history in the United States, but a devastating critique of the genealogy of ideology in the American cultural establishment.<br>

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この本の情報

書名 The errant art of Moby-Dick : the canon, the Cold War, and the struggle for American studies
著作者等 Spanos, William V.
シリーズ名 New Americanists
出版元 Duke University Press
刊行年月 1995
ページ数 xiv, 374 p.
大きさ 24 cm
ISBN 0822315998
082231584X
NCID BA25634830
※クリックでCiNii Booksを表示
言語 英語
出版国 アメリカ合衆国
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