Melville: Fashioning in Modernity
Melville: Fashioning in Modernity considers all of the major fiction with a concentration on lesser-known work, and provides a radically fresh approach to Melville, focusing on: clothing as socially symbolic; dress, power and class; the transgressive nature of dress; inappropriate clothing; the meaning of uniform; the multiplicity of identity that dress may represent; anxiety and modernity. The representation of clothing in the fiction is central to some of Melville's major themes; the relation between private and public identity, social inequality and how this is maintained; the relation between power, justice and authority; the relation between the "civilized" and the "savage."

Frequently clothing represents the malleability of identity (its possibilities as well as its limitations), represents writing itself, as well as becoming indicative of the crisis of modernity. Clothing also becomes a trope for Melville's representations of authorship and of his own scene of writing. Melville: Fashioning in Modernity also encompasses identity in transition, making use of the examination of modernity by theorists such as Anthony Giddens, as well as on theories of figures such as the dandy. In contextualizing Melville's interest in clothing, a variety of other works and writers is considered; works such as Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, and novelists such as Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Jack London, and George Orwell. The book has at its core a consideration of the scene of writing and the publishing history of each text.

1116891378
Melville: Fashioning in Modernity
Melville: Fashioning in Modernity considers all of the major fiction with a concentration on lesser-known work, and provides a radically fresh approach to Melville, focusing on: clothing as socially symbolic; dress, power and class; the transgressive nature of dress; inappropriate clothing; the meaning of uniform; the multiplicity of identity that dress may represent; anxiety and modernity. The representation of clothing in the fiction is central to some of Melville's major themes; the relation between private and public identity, social inequality and how this is maintained; the relation between power, justice and authority; the relation between the "civilized" and the "savage."

Frequently clothing represents the malleability of identity (its possibilities as well as its limitations), represents writing itself, as well as becoming indicative of the crisis of modernity. Clothing also becomes a trope for Melville's representations of authorship and of his own scene of writing. Melville: Fashioning in Modernity also encompasses identity in transition, making use of the examination of modernity by theorists such as Anthony Giddens, as well as on theories of figures such as the dandy. In contextualizing Melville's interest in clothing, a variety of other works and writers is considered; works such as Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, and novelists such as Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Jack London, and George Orwell. The book has at its core a consideration of the scene of writing and the publishing history of each text.

39.95 Out Of Stock
Melville: Fashioning in Modernity

Melville: Fashioning in Modernity

by Stephen Matterson
Melville: Fashioning in Modernity

Melville: Fashioning in Modernity

by Stephen Matterson

Paperback

$39.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

Melville: Fashioning in Modernity considers all of the major fiction with a concentration on lesser-known work, and provides a radically fresh approach to Melville, focusing on: clothing as socially symbolic; dress, power and class; the transgressive nature of dress; inappropriate clothing; the meaning of uniform; the multiplicity of identity that dress may represent; anxiety and modernity. The representation of clothing in the fiction is central to some of Melville's major themes; the relation between private and public identity, social inequality and how this is maintained; the relation between power, justice and authority; the relation between the "civilized" and the "savage."

Frequently clothing represents the malleability of identity (its possibilities as well as its limitations), represents writing itself, as well as becoming indicative of the crisis of modernity. Clothing also becomes a trope for Melville's representations of authorship and of his own scene of writing. Melville: Fashioning in Modernity also encompasses identity in transition, making use of the examination of modernity by theorists such as Anthony Giddens, as well as on theories of figures such as the dandy. In contextualizing Melville's interest in clothing, a variety of other works and writers is considered; works such as Robinson Crusoe and The Scarlet Letter, and novelists such as Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Jack London, and George Orwell. The book has at its core a consideration of the scene of writing and the publishing history of each text.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781623562007
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 07/31/2014
Series: Dress, Body, Culture
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stephen Matterson is Professor of English and Head of the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Stephen Matterson is Professor of English Studies and a Fellow of the College at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. He is the author or editor of nine books and over sixty articles, essays and reviews on aspects of US literature. His past publications include Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man (edited with an Introduction and Notes; Penguin Classics, 1990); American Literature: The Essential Glossary (Oxford University Press, 2003); The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman (edited with an introduction and notes, Wordsworth, 2006); and Studying Poetry (with Darryl Jones; 1st edition 2000; Oxford University Press; updated and enlarged second edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Herman Melville's blue-jean career

Chapter One: So unspeakably significant: Melville, Hawthorne and the shawls

Chapter Two: A very strange compound indeed: Carlyle, Redburn and White-Jacket

Chapter Three: He was an European, and had Cloaths on: Typee.

Chapter Four: The dress befitted the fate: Israel Potter's Lives

Chapter Five: These buttons that we wear: Billy Budd

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews