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Seeds of discontent: the expanding satiric range of Melville's transatlantic diptychs.(Herman Melville)(Critical essay)

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From: Leviathan
Date: 20060601
Author:Winter, Aaron

After the critical and commercial failure of Mardi (1849), Herman Melville promised his London editor that he would henceforth write "no metaphysics, no conic sections, nothing but cakes & ale." (1) If Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850) were a moderately successful return to the accessible sea adventures that had made his transatlantic literary reputation, Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852) were puzzling relapses into abstruse navel-gazing, especially for a would-be professional author with a growing family and a mounting debt. Bridling his wildest metaphysical ambitions for a ...

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