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Melville's "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids": a dialogue about experience, understanding, and truth. (Herman Melville)

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From: Studies in Short Fiction
Date: 19940622
Author:Weyler, Karen A.

Herman Melville's 'The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids' is representative of much of his short fiction in its lack of easily defined genre and structure. The story takes place in two parts, one resembling a sketch and the other a traditional short story. The shift between these approaches can best be understood by tracing the changes in the narrator's character and the ways they affect the narration itself.

Herman Melville's shorter prose works pose many of the same problems for readers as do his longer works, for he engages in similar experiments with genre and ...

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