Interregnum in Providence : the fragmentation of narrative as quest in the prose fictions of Heman Melville

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Herman Melville (1819-1891) remains a recalcitrant and enigmatic presence in the Westerncanon. This dissertation explores the radical narrative strategies engaged by Melville in thecomposition of his prose fictions. It is my contention that Melville's writings to an importantdegree constitute a subversive response to the privileged apocalyptic and teleological narrativesof the day-national, ontological, metaphysical, and literary, or aesthetic-and that he primarilyengages these narratives in terms of the archetypal symbolism of the romantic quest. Against thislinear and goal-oriented, or plotted, progress, Melville's own narratives assert the nonredemptiveforces of time, change, and natural flux, which the quest is symbolically meant toconquer and subject to a redemptive pattern.Melville's critique of the quest takes the shape of a radical fragmentation of its agonistic,evolutionary force-its progress-which is always directed towards a resolvent end. In thissense, most of his protagonists may be defined as questers, characters who seek, by some(individuating) action, to achieve a monumental point of closure. But the Melvillean narrative(even when narrated by the protagonist) always resists this intention. His rhetoric is digressiveand improvisational, his style heterogeneous and parodic, and his endings always indeterminateand equivocal. Significantly, this same quality renders his prose fictions highly resistant to anapocalyptic hermeneutics that strives to redeem the monumental meaning of the work from thenarrative itself.The destabilising questions raised in Melville's work with regard to redemptive plot andprogress ultimately centre on the idea of Providence, in other words, the authorising telos thatinforms, governs and justifies the quest. By fragmenting this quest, Melville undermines theeffective presence of Providence, clearing away what he perceives to be an illusion of controlharboured in a dual but related image of the providential God and the providential author asexternal, metaphysical authorities directing their worlds in terms of a master plan toward finaland meaningful closure. Melville's fiction, then, imaginatively (and philosophically) engages aworld in which such stable authorising centres are absent. It is in terms of this absence that Iintend to examine the nature of Melville's prose fictions. The focus in this dissertation isspecifically on Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter and TheConfidence-Man. Throughout, however, the canonical Moby-Dick and the unfinished andposthumous Billy Budd, are also drawn into the discussion in order to clarify and extend thepoints raised.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University