Moby-Dick: Genesis, Influence, and Intention

Abstracts ALA—San Francisco Moby-Dick: Genesis, Influence, and Intention CHAIR: STEVEN OLSEN-SMITH, BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY From left to right: Benjamin Griffin, Jonathan Cook, Steven Olsen-Smith, and John Barton. Photograph by Soraya Howard. T he American Literature Association’s 19th annual conference in San Francisco, from May 22 to 25, 2008, included a Melville Society panel on “Moby-Dick: Genesis, Influence, and Intention,” with presentations by John Barton, Jonathan Cook, and Benjamin Griffin. The initial call for proposals invited papers on the composition of Moby-Dick, the impact of Melville’s reading and sources, the influence of his personal relationships, his development of subversive rhetorical strategies, his conflicting aims for artistic greatness and financial success, and the extent to which Melville’s intentions for Moby-Dick were enabled or thwarted by material and ideological conventions of 19th-century print production. Final selection of proposals yielded Barton’s attribution and study of a new source for “The Town-Ho’s C
2008 The Authors Journal compilation C
2008 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 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 131 E X T R A C T S Story” (W. B. Stevenson’s Twenty Years’ Residence in South America), Cook’s new examination of an established source for Moby-Dick (the Book of Job), and Griffin’s study of how twentieth-century genetic theories of Moby-Dick (especially the approach taken by George R. Stewart in “The Two Moby-Dicks”) can be seen to duplicate the “documentary hypothesis” applied to the Bible by nineteenth-century scriptural exegetes. The session was a great success, with all three panelists delivering solid and provocative analyses to an audience of approximately 30 scholars. The following abstracts summarize their papers, each of which furthers our efforts to understand the genesis of Melville’s masterwork. “An Unquestionable Source?”: Melville’s “The Town-Ho’s Story” and W. B. Stevenson’s Twenty Years’ Residence in South America John Cyril Barton University of Missouri, Kansas City T his paper brings to light a possible source for Moby-Dick: William Bennet Stevenson’s popular travel narrative, A Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years’ Residence in South America. First published in 1825 and quickly translated into French and later into German, Twenty Years recounts the British sailor’s observations and adventures while traveling and residing in South America, particularly in Peru and Ecuador. Two key episodes from Stevenson’s narrative—his 1806 encounter with the Spanish Inquisition in Lima and his later participation in South America’s revolutionary war—are discussed in works Melville almost certainly read: Prescott’s The Conquest of Peru (1847) and a feature essay, “Lima and the Limanians,” published alongside Melville’s own “The Town-Ho’s Story” in Harper’s October 1851 issue. In that essay, Stevenson is identified as “author of a standard work on South America,” and portions of his encounter with the Inquisition are closely paraphrased. While it is unlikely that Melville read the “Lima” essay before writing “The Town-Ho’s Story” (the two works were published simultaneously), Twenty Years was widely read at the time, and Stevenson was familiar enough to be referenced by last name only in the Harper’s article. And even if Melville never actually read Stevenson, there is a good chance that he heard stories about Lima’s famous English “foreigner” (as Stevenson identifies himself) and his infamous encounter with the Inquisition when Melville was docked outside of Callao, Peru, in 1841, or when he visited Lima in 1844. Drawing upon an array of circumstantial evidence, my paper begins by making a case for Stevenson and his encounter as a likely source for the Limanian setting Melville uses to frame “The Town-Ho’s Story,” Chapter 132 L E V I A T H A N A L A A B S T R A C T S 54 of Moby-Dick. In this setting, which has perplexed more than one critic, Ishmael, an American “foreigner” in Lima (like his British counterpart), tells an...