A white whale ate my leg- Cotkin’s journey with Moby-Dick

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When I first read Moby Dick, I had no idea nor any expectation that there was a musical in the middle of it. The chapter entitled “Midnight, forecastle” [either chapter 39 or 40, depending on your edition] is a short musical number in the form of a play. Sailors dance around, singing while accompanied by a tambourine. The entire chapter is written in standard dramatic format, each character’s dialogue delineated with descriptions of the action:

Azore Sailor
(Ascending and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle).
Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bits; up you mount! Now, boys!
(The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)

(Melville, 1922, p. 156)

It’s this chapter that really turned me on to Moby Dick. It was so unexpected and so “random” and so weird! “What the heck is going on?” And I’ve been thinking that ever since…until today, when I discovered George Cotkin’s exploration of the novel entitled Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby-Dick [call number PS 2384 .M62 C67 2012, on the lower level of McNairy Library].

What makes Cotkin’s book so interesting it that he explores each individual chapter of Moby Dick in sequence. Each chapter has its own short essay in which Cotkin usually compares the contents of the chapter with another author/artist/book in order to provide context. For example, in his exploration of chapter one, which contains the famous first line, “Call me Ishmael”, Cotkin discusses the first lines of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (Camus, 1955, p. 3). This discussion provides context for Ishmael’s state of mind and his own thoughts of suicide. Cotkin also points out ironically that Ishmael has become a voyager on a “vessel bound for a suicidal reckoning with the White Whale of meaning” (Cotkin, 2012, p. 16). Cotkin’s essays, as they pile up on the reader, create a startling sense of insight for what many readers consider an opaque window that even if you could look through it, one would only find a labyrinth. Such is the reputation of Moby Dick.

Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby-Dick displays an industrious attempt at comparative criticism on a granular level. There are 135 chapters in Moby Dick; Cotkin provides the reader with a corresponding group of 135 comparative essays with critical insights as well as historical and literary context. It’s a terrific accomplishment for those of us into Moby Dick [you know who you are].

As for the chapter “Midnight, forecastle”, Cotkin doesn’t have enough time to discuss the “why” of having a musical number in the middle of the most ambitious novel of American literature. But he does pursue an interesting argument, suggesting that the chapter represents the racial tensions tearing apart the United States before the American Civil War:

Perhaps, then, the Pequod is representative of the madness of a nation that had recently ordained a compromise designed to allow Pip and his black brethren to be subjugated, even when they found quiet waters in free states. Pip’s shout is the authentic voice of the slave praying for salvation and preservation from mad white men.

(Cotkin, 2012, p. 79)

Citations:
Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus, and other essays. New York, Knopf, 1955 (1972 printing).
Cotkin, G. (2012). Dive deeper : journeys with Moby-Dick. New York : Oxford University Press, c2012.
Melville, H. (1922). Moby Dick : or, The whale. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1922.

Image:

Rosenthal, James W. View of peg rail and rigging at port bow. – Schooner ERNESTINA, New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park State Pier, New Bedford, Bristol County, MA. 2007. Photograph. Lib. of Cong., Washington D.C. Lib. of Cong. Web. 09 Oct. 2015. <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma1719.photos.574253p/>.

“What in heck was that story about?!?”: Finding critical essays in a new resource, “The Literary Reference Center”

 

So you’ve just read a story for your English/literature class, and you have no idea what it’s about [or you have to write a five page paper about it, and you have no idea what to say]. What do you do?

The McNairy Library has several good databases that can provide you with essays and criticism about many works of literature.

The three that I would try first are…

1- Literary Reference Center– “This comprehensive full-text database provides a broad spectrum of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes—to give students, professors, and researchers a foundation of literary reference works to meet their research needs.” [quote source: http://tinyurl.com/nckbxno]

2- Literature Resource Center– “Full-text articles from scholarly journals and literary magazines are combined with critical essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, biographies, and more to provide a wealth of information on authors, their works, and literary movements.  Researchers at all levels will find the information they need, with content covering all genres and disciplines, all time periods and all parts of the world.” [quote source: http://tinyurl.com/bmxaoxj].

3- Literature Criticism Online– This database provides similar resources as the two above, but it targets juvenile and children’s literature.

These three databases can be found in the “L” section of our database list at http://www.library.millersville.edu/libguides/all-databases-title#L.

This blog post concerns the Literary Reference Center, because it is a new product to the McNairy Library.

To find it, navigate to the link for the Literary Reference Center… >
Go to the library’s main website (http://www.library.millersville.edu) >
Scroll to the bottom and click on “Articles and Databases” >
Click on “All Databases by Title” in the right hand column >
Scroll down to the “L” section>
You’ll find the link to the Literary Reference Center towards the bottom of that section.

When you put a story or book title into the search field, be sure to put quotation marks around it. That will insure that the “discovery service” [aka the “search box”, the “search engine”] will search for the title as a complete phrase rather than as a bunch of separate words.

As an example, put in good man is hard to find. That search produces 451 results, most of them about Flannery O’Connor’s story “A good man is hard to find”.

Results for "good man is hard to find" search. Notice the "Source Type" section of the limiters in the left hand column.

Notice in the left hand column that there are “limiters” [they limit the amount of results you get]. Scroll down to the “Source Types” section in the limiters and click on “Literary Criticism”. That will limit your results to essays that discuss the “meaning”, symbolism, literary constructs, language, affinities, etc., in the story.

Besides individual essays, you might also be interested in the general reception of a book or story. For instance, when the story was first published, how did people initially react to it? How do they react to it now?

To find that information, you should perform a search using the term “critical reception” [again, use the quotation marks to target records with that exact phrase]. For example, if you wanted to find out the critical reception of John Steinbeck’s work, you could do a search for “critical reception” AND Steinbeck [see image below].

"Critical reception" search

Another term that you may want to use is “critical insights”. It’s a subject term that is used and indexed in many of the library records for literature.

Also notice that when you perform a search in the Literary Reference Center, there are many different fields that you can search [see image below].

The list of searchable fields in the drop down list

Notice that there’s a field for “Authors Cultural Identity”. You can search this field for cultural identity, but as of today, August 28, 2015, there are only six (6, 5+1, 2×3, one less than seven) cultural identities indexed in this field:

1- African American
2- Asian American
3- Gay and Lesbian
4- Jewish
5- Latino or Latina
6- Native American

My guess is that in the future there will be a greater variety of “cultural identities” indexed in this database. But for now, you can use the six above.

Also notice in the list of searchable fields that you can search for “Literary Characters” and “Literary Locales” [a search using “Lancaster” in “Locales” brings up three resources, two about a misunderstood President and one about a chocolatier].

Also notice in the blue bar at the top of the page that there are additional resources under the “More” link, including a glossary. So if you don’t know what a literary term means, you can look it up in the glossary [see image below].

Resources under the "More" link, also showing entries in the glossary

To find other databases and resources for literary criticism, go to our resource guide for literature: http://guides.library.millersville.edu/literature.

If you have any questions using this database, or any other database in the library’s collection, or if you want to correct my grammar and/or spelling, or it you think that I need a haircut, feel free to contact me at nathan.pease@millersville.edu.

[Nathan Pease is an adjunct Research Librarian at the McNairy Library and Learning Forum on the campus of Millersville University. In his spare time, Mr. Pease digitizes out-of-print vinyl records and plays “European board games” such as Targi, Pandemic, Dominion, among others. He also volunteers and works part-time at LancasterHistory.Org, also know as the Lancaster County Historical Society.]

[The image at the top of this blog, “Self-Portrait in a group (José Almada Negreiros), 1925” by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes, is licensed under CC BY 2.0.]