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The private Melville
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The private Melville

Author: Philip Young
Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1993.
Edition/Format: Book : State or province government publication : English
Summary:
The Private Melville demonstrates how great a role his profound sense of privacy played in Melville's life and work. Secrets he was careful never to reveal are unmasked by Philip Young. Privacy, as it appears to Melville here, is of three types. First are family matters the public had no business knowing about, such as the life story of a secret half-sister; next the story of the life of a cousin, Priscilla, model  Read more...
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Details

Named Person: Herman Melville; Herman Melville
Material Type: Government publication, State or province government publication
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Philip Young
ISBN: 0271008571 9780271008578
OCLC Number: 25872689
Description: xii, 163 p. ; 24 cm.
Responsibility: Philip Young.

Abstract:

The Private Melville demonstrates how great a role his profound sense of privacy played in Melville's life and work. Secrets he was careful never to reveal are unmasked by Philip Young. Privacy, as it appears to Melville here, is of three types. First are family matters the public had no business knowing about, such as the life story of a secret half-sister; next the story of the life of a cousin, Priscilla, model for the heroine of his novel Pierre, who scandalously "marries" her half-brother; and then a history testing a rash claim made by Melville regarding the lineage of "hundreds" of ordinary New England families. The second type concerns four Berkshire Tales that depend heavily on "private jokes," and thus have secret meaning that escaped the editors who printed them and continue to evade critics and scholars. The third kind deals with two "fictions" so little understood that the meaning might as well be secret: a speech of Ahab's, which is called the "spiritual climax" of Moby-Dick; and Melville's very last fiction, "Daniel Orme," a self-portrait in which he has gone pretty much unrecognized.

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