The Confidence-Man: Melville and the Problem of Others
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Notes
1. Hans Vaihinger, quoted in Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980), p. 135 n. 5.
2. Rorty, p. 134 and n. 4; Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979), p. 482.
3. Rorty, p. 46.
4. Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 4.
5. Moby-Dick, p. 164. All page references to Melville's works are to the volumes of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle, et al., 12 vols. to date (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern Univ. Press and The Newberry Library, 1968- ). Page references will appear parenthetically.
6. R. W. B. Lewis, Afterword to The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 265.
7. Paul Brodtkorb, Jr., "The Confidence-Man: The Con-Man as Hero," SNNTS, 1 (1969), 423.
8. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Alfred R. Ferguson et al., 4 vols. to date (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971- ), Vol. 2, 120, 116; Vol. 1, 37, 8.
9. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder (New York: Random House, 1977), p. xiii. Cf. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, "Das Höchste wäre: zu begreifen, daß alles Faktische schon Theorie ist," Maximen und Reflexionen, no. 575; Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, ed. Ernst Beutler, 27 vols. (Zurich: Artemis, 1948-71), Vol. 9, 574. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1944), p. 174.
10. John Bryant, "Citizens of a World to Come: Melville and the Millennial Cosmopolite," AL, 59 (1987), 29.
11. Wai-chee Dimock, Empire for Liberty; Melville and the Poetics of Individualism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 207-08; Cecelia Tichi, "Melville's Craft and Theme of Language Debased in The Confidence-Man," ELH, 39 (1972), 641-42.
12. Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 103-04; Michael Fischer, Stanley Cavell and Literary Skepticism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 96.
13. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, p. 372.
14. On Melville's self-erasing style, see Lewis, pp. 264-65, 272.
15. Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville's Reading, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 76-77, and Pursuing Melville (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 299, 391 n. 35. For Plato's influence on The Confidence-Man, see Sealts, Pursuing Melville, pp. 326-27, and John Wenke, "'Ontological Heroics': Melville's Philosophical Art," in A Companion to Melville Studies, ed. John Bryant (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 576-77.
16. A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and his Work (London: Methuen, 1978), p. 349.
17. Gérard Genette, "Discours du récit," Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 238 ("tout événement raconté par un récit est à un niveau diégétique immédiatement supérieur à celui où se situe l'acte narratif producteur de ce récit"); see pp. 238-51 for detailed discussion of the different diegetic levels. For further discussion, see Gérard Genette, Nouveau discours du récit (Paris: Seuil, 1983), pp. 55-64.
18. Genette, Figures III, p. 239 n. 1.
19. Daniel G. Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), p. 289; Joel Porte, The Romance in America (Middletown: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1969), p. 166.
20. Hershel Parker, "The Metaphysics of Indian-hating," in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, ed. Hershel Parker (New York: Norton, 1971), p. 324. See also The Confidence-Man (Northwestern-Newberry Ed.), "Historical Note," p. 281 n. 30 ad finem.
21. For helpful surveys of the criticism, see Northwestern-Newberry Ed., pp. 340-42, and John Bryant, "The Confidence-Man: Melville's Problem Novel," in A Companion to Melville Studies, pp. 336-37.
22. The real Hall was apparently exposed to similar narrative treats. He refers to Moredock as "a gentlemen . . . whose history we have often heard repeated by...
