Wordsworth in Melville's "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo"

Wordsworth in Melville’s “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo” ARND BOHM Carleton University, Ottawa W riters rarely work in isolation from literary tradition or their contemporaries. Melville was no exception, as his wide-ranging literary allusions attest. Significant among contemporaries who engaged him was William Wordsworth, whose stature in America was indisputable even if his verse was not to everyone’s liking. Those who shared the aesthetic and political values in the “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads found its simple and direct voice congenial; it is not surprising to find Thoreau approving Wordsworth’s style. On the other hand, Emerson was put off by his “narrowness,” “general tameness,” and “conformity.”1 One might expect that Melville, who had had considerable opportunity to hear “language really used by men,” would have been a straightforward supporter of Wordsworth’s program to bring poetic language closer to the vernacular, but the case is not so simple.2 That he read him is certain because Melville’s annotated copy of an edition of Wordsworth’s Complete Poetical Works (1839) has survived. Thomas Heffernan has analyzed the marginalia and markings, so we also know that Melville had read many of the poems critically, as well as the 1800 “Preface.” C
2007 The Authors Journal compilation C
2007 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc 1 Annabel Newton, Wordsworth in Early American Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928), 143-44, 149. See also John Brooks Moore, “Emerson on Wordsworth,” PMLA 41.1 (1926): 179-92; David Simpson, “Wordsworth in America,” in The Age of William Wordsworth, ed. Kenneth R. Johnston and Gene W. Ruoff (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 276-90, esp. 287; and David Bromwich, “From Wordsworth to Emerson,” Romantic Revolutions: Criticism and Theory, ed. Kenneth R. Johnston, Gilbert Chaitin, Karen Hanson and Herbert Marks (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 202-18. 2 On Melville’s relationship to Wordsworth, see Thomas Heffernan, “Melville and Wordsworth,” American Literature 49.3 (1977): 338-51; Hershel Parker, “Melville and the Berkshires: EmotionLaden Terrain, ‘Reckless Sky-Assaulting Mood,’ and Encroaching Wordsworthianism,” American Literature: The New England Heritage, ed. James Nagel and Richard Astro (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1981), 65-80; and Jonathan Hall, “The Non-correspondent Breeze: Melville’s Rewriting of Wordsworth in Pierre,” ESQ 39.1 (1993): 1-19. Maryhelen C. Harmon, “Ideality, Reality, and Inspiration: Melville and Wordsworth in Rome,” Melville “Among the Nations”: Proceedings of an International Conference, Volos, Greece, July 2-6, 1997, ed. Sanford E. Marovitz and A. C. Christodoulou (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001), 108-18, points only to general parallels. L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 25 A R N D B O H M And Robert A. Duggan convincingly demonstrates Melville’s “re-writing” of Wordsworth’s Prelude in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866).3 One text that reveals the complexities of Melville’s relationship to Wordsworth more fully is the provocative and hilarious short story “CockA -Doodle-Doo! Or the Crowing of the Noble Cock Beneventano.”4 The story presents interesting problems. Its explicit recognizable quotation of a passage from “Resolution and Independence” has made identifying other allusions to Wordsworth in Melville’s “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!” easy.5 However, identification by itself does not necessarily advance our understanding of the story. One suggestion, that “Resolution and Independence” provided something like a template for the story’s development, relies upon a reading of Wordsworth’s poem as a homily.6 But while many readers do accept Wordsworth’s preaching, Melville would not have shared their sympathy unreservedly, as will become more evident in the following discussion. Other issues need to be addressed as well. First, how does the proliferation of other literary references fit with the predominant Wordsworthian allusions? Then there are the puns, both tame and obscene. Are they only an embarrassing lapse from decorum? Finally, how does the narrator, whom some see as a figure of Melville,7 relate to the 3 Robert A. Duggan, Jr., “‘Sleep No More’ Again...