Wicked Books: Melville and Religion

Obenzinger, Hilton

doi:10.1002/9780470996782.ch12

Cited by 13 publications

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“…4 4 Like Pardes, Hilton Obenzinger has documented “the profound way the King James Version of the Bible shapes [Melville's] religious as well as literary universe” (182); this typographical comparison highlights another way in which Melville's relationship with the Bible was mediated by the translators and typesetters of the KJV. …”

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confidence: 99%

Moby-Dick as Third Testament: A Novel “Not Come to Destroy But to Fulfill” the Bible

Hutchins

2011

Leviathan

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confidence: 99%

Moby-Dick as Third Testament: A Novel “Not Come to Destroy But to Fulfill” the Bible

Hutchins

2011

Leviathan

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“…2 2 See, for example, Bezanson, Berthold, Elliot, Franchot, Goldman, Knapp, Milder, Obenzinger, Potter, Ra’ad, Rosenthal, and Yothers. …”

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Melville's Wired World: Media, Fact, and Faith in Clarel

Zlatic

2011

Leviathan

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Melville's Wisdom

Schlarb¹

2021

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This book explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Melville’s work is an example of how romantic literature fills the interpretive lacuna left by contemporary theology. This book argues that attending to Melville’s engagement with the wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) can help us understand a paradox at the heart of American modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical language and religious culture. In wisdom, which addresses questions of theology, radical skepticism, and the nature of evil, Melville finds an ethos of critical inquiry that allows him to embrace the acumen of modern analytical techniques such as higher biblical criticism, while salvaging simultaneously the spiritual authority of biblical language. Wisdom for Melville constitutes both object and analytical framework in this balancing act. Melville’s Wisdom joins other works of postsecular literary studies in challenging its own discipline’s constitutive secularization narrative by rethinking modern, putatively secular cultural formations in terms of their reciprocity with religious concepts and texts. The book foregrounds Melville’s sustained, career-spanning concern with biblical wisdom, its formal properties, and its knowledge-creating potential. By excavating this project from Melville’s oeuvre, Melville’s Wisdom shows how he seeks to avoid the spiritually corrosive effects of suspicious reading while celebrating truth-seeking over subversive iniquity.

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Wicked Books: Melville and Religion

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Moby-Dick as Third Testament: A Novel “Not Come to Destroy But to Fulfill” the Bible

Moby-Dick as Third Testament: A Novel “Not Come to Destroy But to Fulfill” the Bible

Melville's Wired World: Media, Fact, and Faith in Clarel

Melville's Wisdom

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