Customer Reviews

Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Melville studies are plagued by two contrasting types of criticism: turgid, historical treatises and fluffy, self-absorbed studies of trendy nonsense. This work, however, revolutionized Melville studies by combining historical, psychoanalytic and literary analysis in an exceptionally illuminating manner. It is without question the single best study of Melville in the past thirty years.

I'll let Susan Howe, poet-scholar, speak on this one: "I think the most exciting book on Melville recently [1989] is Subversive Genealogies...Melville, like Hamlet, saw the ghost under the helmet. How do you act when you know what you know? As Olson puts it in the "Letter [for Melville 1951]," 'this beast hauled up out of great water was society'. The Leviathan. Moby. Rogin beautifully shows how Melville works in and around, for and against what he sees and says...Home, politics, and art are here together as they should be. You cannot separate an author from family, history, and ideology."