Job's Leviathan: Between Melville and Alter

This essay considers Robert Alter's reading of Job in The Art of Biblical Poetry. It uses his close reading of God's Whirlwind poem as a point of departure to discuss Melville's grand homage to Job in Moby-Dick. Special attention is given to Melville's response to the continental advocates of the aesthetic turn in biblical exegesis in his tantalizing juggling of physical and metaphysical leviathans.