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『모비딕』의 미학적 가치론: 개인 서사 창출The Literary Value of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: Aesthetics of Narrative Self-Fashioning

Other Titles
The Literary Value of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: Aesthetics of Narrative Self-Fashioning
Authors
조규형
Issue Date
2021
Publisher
미국소설학회
Keywords
Herman Melville; Moby-Dick; Ahab; Ishmael; Jonah; Town-Ho; value; narrative; aesthetics; sublime; self-fashioning; aesthetics of existence; reader
Citation
미국소설, v.28, no.3, pp 89 - 124
Pages
36
Indexed
KCI
Journal Title
미국소설
Volume
28
Number
3
Start Page
89
End Page
124
URI
https://scholar.korea.ac.kr/handle/2021.sw.korea/138328
ISSN
1738-5784
Abstract
This discussion explores the value of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as literary narrative. In terms of narrative, the grand narrative of the novel embeds several small but important narratives. Pastor Mapple’s sermon on Jonah emphasizes a certain part of the Book of Jonah for the congregation. Ishmael’s view of Jonah later shifts beyond the sublime of Mapple’s religious authority towards his own personal sublime variation. Ishmael’s telling of the story of the Town-Ho, a sperm whaler, expands its constitutive uncertainty, thereby only amplifying its inherent sublime dimension. The stories of Jonah and Town-Ho expand into the novel, Moby-Dick and yield a further narrative surplus. Ishmael’s narrative accompanies not only the narrative of Jonah and Town-Ho, but also that of Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod. Ishmael’s self, fashioned with these narratives, is in the constant process of construction and deconstruction via connections and deviations among them. The initial invocation of Moby-Dick to the reader, “Call me Ishmael,” represents the dual processes of Ishmael’s ‘self-fashioning’: objectifying his own experience as well as inviting the readers to his narrative construction. As in sublime aesthetics, readers’ engagements with Ishmael’s narrative self-composition create continuous reinterpretation and surplus. Moby-Dick as Ishmael’s self-narrative provides us a model of Foucauldian “aesthetics of existence.” Ishmael became the heroic reader of the self-narrative, and accordingly the reader of the narrative has an opportunity of self-establishment as another heroic reader. The narrative aesthetics of Moby-Dick helps us, just not to discover or explore its meanings, but to initiate the meanings and values of our own reading.
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College of Liberal Arts > Department of English Language and Literature > 1. Journal Articles

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