A Subtler Expression: Melville's Historiography of the Non-Event

• Main Author: Samuel, Petal
• Other Authors: Dr. Colin Dayan
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: VANDERBILT 2012
• Subjects: English
• Online Access: http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07032012-115958/

This paper examines Herman Melvilles Pierre, and the novels critical reception, in order to investigate and theorize the relevance of Melvilles work for Caribbean writers and historians. This work will contend that the mode in which Melville engages with historical archives, pushes the boundaries between fiction and history, and troubles traditional historiographical techniques of his time is central to the attractiveness of Melvilles works for peoples whose histories were in the process of, and continue to be in the process of, being vigorously suppressed. Melville practices a mode of literary historiography that bears distinct convergences with the historiographical techniques of Caribbean writers like CLR James, Aimé Césaire and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Furthermore, I examine the critical reception of Melvilles narrative as exemplary of a public discourse of suppression that exposes not only the mechanisms of power in the production of both history and literature, but also the cultural, political, and ideological anxieties of a mid-19th century United States on the brink on civil war.