Syllabus Spring Semester. English 682. Melville. 
Professors Susan Howe and Neil Schmitz.  Tues, 
12:30pm -3:30pm. 436 Clemens.    

Assigned Texts:  Moby-Dick (Penguin), Piazza Tales (Northwestern), 
Letters to Hawthorne, Duyckinck and others.  
As preparation for this seminar you should have at least read Typee, 
Redburn, and Pierre. You should also have a general acquaintance with 
Melville's biography. 
 
 Each student taking the course for credit will present one seminar 
report (15-20 mins) and one final research paper of twenty pages. 


Jan 26:   Introduction. Overview of semester.  Discussion of 
syllabus, presentations etc. SH&NS     

Feb 2:  "Hawthorne and His Mosses" "Etymology," 
"Extracts.""Epilogue" SH

Feb 9:  "Loomings" "1850's Compromise. NS  First oral 
presentation. 

Feb 16:  "The sermon" (Jonah) allegory. SH 

Feb 23:  "Town-Ho" "Lee Shore" NS

March 2:  "Cetology" "Coffins" "The Whiteness of the 		  
Whale:" SH   

March 9:  Comic hyperbole, humor NS 

March 16:  Pro-Ahab-- or"The carpenter"or "The Castaway" or 
various meetings of ships. SH

March 23:  Anti-Ahab--NS   

March 30: Last discussion of Moby-Dick.  NS&SH 


SPRING BREAK

April 13:  Piazza Tales: "The Piazza," "The Encantadas,"  "The 
Bell-Tower," NS & SH

April 20:  "Bartleby" SH

April 27:   "Benito Cereno" NS

May 4:   Last class. NS&SH. Papers due.   


Some ideas for presentations and papers:  Reports on Typee--leg injury, 
taboo, cannibalism, and its relation to Moby-Dick. Ahab's lost leg.  Leg 
injuries etc. 

Moby-Dick as precurser of Finnegan's Wake. There are many ways this can 
be done. 

Report on Mardi as Melville's first attempt at a work on the scale of 
Moby-Dick. 

Research on Jonah in scripture and also in American literary 
consciousness. 

Research on Narcissus, narcissism etc in Moby-Dick. 

A reading of both Sedgwick's books Between Men: English Literature and 
Male Homosexual Desire and Epistemology of the Closet in relation to 
Moby or to Melville. 

Exploration of why Melville so fascinated a generation ('50's and 60's) 
of American Literary critics and the canonization of Melville that 
coincided with the beginning of American Studies Departments and the 
subject as a discipline. F.O. Mattheissen, Perry Miller, Henry Murray, 
Charles Olson, to name a few. 

Melville's use of pulp literature such as captivity narratives, travel 
journals, whaling stories, penny journals etc. in his work.

Melville and quotation.