The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 18 pages of analysis & critique of The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature.

The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 18 pages of analysis & critique of The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature.
This section contains 5,065 words
(approx. 17 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by William Hamilton

SOURCE: “Melville and the Sea,” in Soundings, Vol. 62, No. 4, Winter, 1979, pp. 417-29.

In the following essay, Hamilton discusses Moby-Dick's sea in terms of its theological significance to Melville.

For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is For breaking a man, even though he may be a very strong one. 

Homer, Odyssey, VIII, lines 138-39

In Moby Dick the sea appears to mean virtually everything. It is the home of both the nursing whale-mothers and the rapacious shark. It has a serenity that can nearly cure Ahab's monomania; it is also darkness and death. It is in any case the primary symbol in Moby Dick and a clue to Melville's artistic and religious imagination. If, as Melville reminds us, the sea covers two-thirds of the earth, it also seems to cover two-thirds of Moby Dick. It is both earth's center, its...

(read more)

This section contains 5,065 words
(approx. 17 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by William Hamilton
Copyrights
Gale
Critical Essay by William Hamilton from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.