Open AccessMelville and the Indians: Reading, Cosmopolitanism, and the Biographical Condition
Author(s) -
John Bryant
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
er(r)go
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2544-3186
pISSN - 1508-6305
DOI - 10.31261/errgo.11687
Subject(s) - distrust , reading (process) , cosmopolitanism , biography , empathy , psychoanalysis , psychology , history , sociology , aesthetics , philosophy , social psychology , political science , art history , law , linguistics , politics , psychotherapist
Responding to the distrust in biography, widely accepted in literary studies, this article attempts to rethink the relationship between the reader and the author, with a special emphasis put on the role of the biographer. Such a task might help us read such texts authored by Herman Melville as Pierre; or The Ambiguities, which tend to raise our amazement and anxiety with their autobiographical entanglement. Moreover, the analyses of reading habits of the Melville family are crucial if we endeavour to understand Herman Melville’s progressing cosmopolitism and cultural empathy, influenced by the black legend of his grandfather and his involvement in the genocide of Native Americans.