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The shape of the whale: flukes and other tales.("Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville)(Critical essay)

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From: Leviathan
Date: 20051001
Author:Djelal, Juana Celia

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." So Melville avers in the opening sentence of Chapter 82 of Moby-Dick, "The Honor and Glory of Whaling." One enterprise to which he refers concerns the author's research into the "great honorableness and antiquity" of whaling, "and especially," he writes, "when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity." (1)

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