The Romantic architecture of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

"In this study Shawn Thomson undertakes a consistent and deliberate approach to the form of the novel in an attempt to allow its elements, organization, and phenomena to answer questions about larger relationships and patterns. Thomson's approach asks: What is the position of the author in relation to the work, what in fact is a center of consciousness, and what is real in Moby-Dick?". "At the center of the approach is an examination of Ahab's enthusiasm and its parallels to Shelley's sense of the Promethean mission of the artist. Shelley exists as an animating presence, enlivening the fundamental oppositions of the novel: the vertical ascension of Ahab's drama and Ishmael's horizontal integration of feeling, thought, and experience.". "Thomson explores Ahab's unyielding Romantic imagination - an imagination that will not be obstructed or overshadowed by the gross disorder and catastrophic face of nature. Ahab's passionate idealism is an extension of Shelley's powerful imagination, an obsessive energy that broadens and surpasses Classical and Christian idealism.". "Thomson's line of inquiry places Shelley's Romantic ontology in the industrial world and hostile environment of Moby-Dick. Ishmael uses metaphor to create an emergent description of the world, building a knowledge of the whale and defining his perspective of the universe. Ahab shows the failings of inspiration. His being is associated with dominating towers, monumental heights of grandeur, and the mythmaking act. Thomson demonstrates how Melville tests and, ultimately, collapses Shelley's passionate idealism and constructs a new reality in its place.". "Borrowing from Oliver Sacks, Shakespeare, Richard Wright, contemporary art criticism, geology, and geography, this study encompasses this eccentric American novel by building upon traditional approaches and bringing new perspectives into the discussion. Thomson blends science, aesthetics, and theory into an absorbing and full reading of Melville's art."--BOOK JACKET.