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Melville’S Economy Of Language, Paul Royster

Paul Royster

This essay discusses two works by American writer Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852), with emphasis on the uses of economic metaphors and on the issues of labor and alienation in the production of whale oil and of literature. Its argument is that Melville considered the mythology of American capitalism positively in the earlier work, and negatively in the later one. Moby-Dick explores the economic relations of the (capitalist) production of whale oil and converts them to metaphors for metaphysical truths. Pierre explores the economic relations involved in the production of literature and exposes the extent to which a …