Author : John Bryant
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : American literature
ISBN : 9780195077827
Melville and Repose by John Bryant Pdf
Arguing that Melville saw writing as a series of attempts to reach an unreachable union of word and thought ("voicing the voiceless"), Bryant shows how Melville attempted to place the reader in an equivalent condition of "tense repose." He posits that Melville incorporated laughter into his writing as a means of teasing the reader into deeper thought. To this end, Melville fused a "rhetoric of geniality" and "picturesque sensibility" adopted from the British with a "rhetoric of deceit" borrowed from the American tall tale, thus creating his own amiably cosmopolitan "rhetoric of aesthetic repose.".