Melville's First Short Story:A Parody of Poe

Peter A. Obuchowski
Central Michigan University

Notes

1. Merton M. Sealts, Jr., The Writings of Herman Melville, Vol. 9, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (Chicago and Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press and the Newberry Library, 1987), p. 462.

2. William H. Gilman, Melville's Early Life and Redburn (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1951), p. 120. Quoted in Sealts, p. 462.

3. Leon Howard, Herman Melville: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1951), p. 15. Quoted in Sealts, p. 462.

4. Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Writings, Vol. 9, p. 462.

5. William H. Gilman, p. 122. Gilman's comment on romance is directed at romance in general, meaning an attitude to life or an approach to experience. This paper limits "romance" to romance as literature.

6. Herman Melville, "Fragment 2," Writings, Vol. 9, p. 202. All subsequent quotations from "Fragment 2" are from this edition.

7. One of Melville's more comical misuses is the substitution of "kiss" for "touch" in Romeo's words to Juliet which then, laughably, has the glove capable of implanting a kiss (p. 202). For a discussion of the many inaccuracies of quotation and allusion in "Fragment 2," see Gilman, pp. 114-15. Gilman does not, however, perceive the mistakes as part of an intentional satiric design.

8. For an extended discussion of this thematic dimension of the novel, see Peter A. Obuchowski, "Technique and Meaning in Melville's Israel Potter," CLAJ, 31 (June 1988), 455-71.

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