LEADER 06026nam 22007454 450 001 9910787042503321 005 20140902015302.0 010 $a0-8223-1599-8 010 $a0-8223-7958-9 024 7 $a10.1515/9780822379584 035 $a(CKB)3710000000238161 035 $a(OCoLC)624266479 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10930090 035 $a(SSID)ssj0001379734 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11759349 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0001379734 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)11365507 035 $a(PQKB)10927192 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3008072 035 $a889587571 035 $a(OCoLC)1153895687 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse80853 035 $a(DE-B1597)554190 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780822379584 035 $a(OCoLC)1226679011 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000000238161 100 $a20140829d1995 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe errant art of Moby-Dick $ethe canon, the Cold War, and the struggle for American studies /$fWilliam V. Spanos 210 1$aDurham, N.C. :$cDuke University Press,$d1995. 215 $a1 online resource (393 p.) 225 1 $aNew Americanists 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a1-322-14103-7 311 $a0-8223-1584-X 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages [353]-363) and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $t1. MOBY-DICK AND THE AMERICAN CANON -- $tPosthumanist Theory and Canon Formation -- $tA Genealogical History of the Reception of Moby-Dick, 1850-1945 -- $tThe New Americanist "Field-Imaginary" and the Vietnam War -- $tThe New Americanists and Moby-Dick -- $tThe Limits of the New Americanist Discourse -- $t2. METAPHYSICS AND SPATIAL FORM: MELVILLE'S CRITIQUE OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY AND FICTION -- $tTragic Vision and Metaphysics -- $tTragic Vision and Moby-Dick -- $tMelville's Errant Measure: The Testimony of the Fiction Following Moby-Dick -- $t3. THE ERRANT ART OF MOBY-DICK -- $tThe Question of Ishmael's Name -- $tIshmael's Reading of Father Mapple's Reading of the Jonah Text -- $tThe Centered Circle, the Imperial Gaze, and Abasement -- $tThe American Adam and the Naming of the White Whale -- $tIshmael and the Unnaming of Moby Dick -- $tIshmael, Theory, and Practice -- $tThe Self as Orphan -- $tIshmael and Negative Capability -- $tRepresentation and Errancy: The Art of Narration -- $tCetology and Discipline -- $tPolitical Economy in Moby-Dick: Toward a Counterhegemony -- $tRepetition and the Indissoluble Continuum of Being: Melville's Polis -- $tMoby-Dick as Diabolic Book -- $tThe Question of Ishmael's Name: A Repetition -- $tThe Struggle to Appropriate Moby-Dick: Indeterminacy and Positionality -- $t4. MOBY-DICK AND THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN OCCASION -- $tThe "Vietnam Syndrome" -- $tFredric Jameson and Frank Lentricchia: Reading Michael Herr's Dispatches -- $tThe Postmodernity of the Vietnam War -- $tMoby-Dick and the Vietnam War -- $tNotes -- $tBibliography -- $tIndex 330 $aIn The Errant Art of Moby-Dick, one of America?s most distinguished critics reexamines Melville?s monumental novel and turns the occasion into a meditation on the history and implications of canon formation. In Moby-Dick?a work virtually ignored and discredited at the time of its publication?William V. Spanos uncovers a text remarkably suited as a foundation for a "New Americanist" critique of the ideology based on Puritan origins that was codified in the canon established by "Old Americanist" critics from F. O. Matthiessen to Lionel Trilling. But Spanos also shows, with the novel still as his focus, the limitations of this "New Americanist" discourse and its failure to escape the totalizing imperial perspective it finds in its predecessor.Combining Heideggerian ontology with a sociopolitical perspective derived primarily from Foucault, the reading of Moby-Dick that forms the center of this book demonstrates that the traditional identification of Melville?s novel as a "romance" renders it complicitous in the discourse of the Cold War. At the same time, Spanos shows how New Americanist criticism overlooks the degree to which Moby-Dick anticipates not only America?s self-representation as the savior of the world against communism, but also the emergent postmodern and anti-imperial discourse deployed against such an image. Spanos?s critique reveals the extraordinary relevance of Melville?s novel as a post-Cold War text, foreshadowing not only the self-destructive end of the historical formation of the American cultural identity in the genocidal assault on Vietnam, but also the reactionary labeling of the current era as "the end of history."This provocative and challenging study presents not only a new view of the development of literary history in the United States, but a devastating critique of the genealogy of ideology in the American cultural establishment. 410 0$aNew Americanists. 606 $aPolitics and literature$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aLiterature and society$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aSea stories, American$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc 606 $aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc 606 $aCriticism$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aCanon (Literature) 606 $aCold War 615 0$aPolitics and literature$xHistory 615 0$aLiterature and society$xHistory 615 0$aSea stories, American$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc. 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism$xTheory, etc. 615 0$aCriticism$xHistory 615 0$aCanon (Literature) 615 0$aCold War. 676 $a813/.3 700 $aSpanos$b William V$0465317 801 0$bNDD 801 1$bNDD 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910787042503321 996 $aThe errant art of Moby-Dick$93707207 997 $aUNINA