Subversive Genealogy

Description:

This book makes several claims which ought to be stated at the outset: that Herman Melville is a recorder and interpreter of American society whose work is comparable to that of the great nineteenth-century European realists; that there was a crisis of bourgeois society at midcentury on both continents, but that in America it entered politics by way of slavery and race rather than class; that the crisis called into question the ideal realm of liberal political freedom; that Melville was particularly sensitive to the American crisis because of the political importance of his clan and the political history of his family; that a study of Melville's fiction, and of the society refracted through it, must also be a history of Melville's family, and of the writer's relation to his kin; and finally, that Melville rendered American history symbolically, so that a history of his fiction, his family, and his psyche is also a history of the development and displacement of major symbols in his work. - Preface.

subjects: American Political fiction,  Family in literature,  History,  History and criticism,  Political and social views,  Political fiction, American,  Politics and literature,  Politics in literature,  Social norms in literature,  Families in literature,  Melville, herman, 1819-1891

People: Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Places: United States

Times: 19th century