Melville's Monumental Imagination

• Main Author: Maloney, Ian S.
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2006; Taylor and Francis
• Edition: 1
• Series: Studies in Major Literary Authors
• Subjects: Description (Rhetoric); Ekphrasis; Literature; Memorials in literature; Monuments in literature; Sculpture in literature; Ekphrastic Fear; Glass Ship; indifference; sculptural; Young Man; Newfound Land; Sovereign Authorship; Bunker Hill; hope; Dumb Stones; King George III; Monumental Figure; Melville's Narrative; Ekphrastic Hope; Ishmael's Narrative; melvillean; George III; bunker; Melville's Career; narrative; Bunker Hill Monument; Bosom Friend; Ekphrastic Indifference; hill; narrator; Melville's Writing; Realistic Depiction; Nelson Monument; Drawn Back; Melville's Imagination; Polynesian Art; Melville's Project; travel; ekphrastic; Melville's Words
• ISBN: 041597531X; 9780415975315; 0415867193; 9780415867191
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203959213

Melville's Monumental Imagination explores the connection between the contested 19th century American monument tradition and one of the nation's most revered authors, Herman Melville (1819-1891). The book was written to fill a void in recent Melville scholarship. To date, there has not been a monograph that focuses exclusively on Melville's incorporation of monuments in his fictional world. The book charts the territory of Melville's novels in order to provide a trajectory of the monumental image in one particular literary form. This feature allows the reader to gradually see the monumental image as an important marker that sheds light into Melville's eventual abandonment of long fiction. Melville's Monumental Imagination combines literary analysis and cultural criticism for a long neglected aspect of our nation's iconic development in statuary.