The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick

The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick offers the first book-length study of how physical disability shapes one of the world's most iconic novels. For generations, readers have viewed Captain Ahab's whalebone leg as a symbol of what he lacks, the limb he lost while fighting the white whale off the coast of Japan. David Haven Blake considers that ivory leg in a historical, medical, and geo-political context. Drawing on extensive archival research, he situates Ahab's prosthesis at the center of the...