1st Edition
Melville’s (Dis)Orders Four Transatlantic Dialogues on Essence, Existence, and the Truth of Things
Exposition, or On the Truth of Things
1 Problematizing Prudence, Bordering Blasphemy: Lawyerly Reflections in Melville’s Fiction
John Matteson
Abner Kneeland, Lemuel Shaw, and American Blasphemy
Brown v. Kendall and the Triumph of Prudence
Prudence and Blasphemy in Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick and the Problem of Democracy
Law, Codification, and the Escape from Orthodoxy
Melville’s Quarrel with Prudence in Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick and Blasphemy
Moby-Dick as a Blasphemous Text
Pierre and Prudence
“Bartleby”: The Quarrel with Prudence Rejoined
Imprudence Triumphant: “The Lightning-Rod Man”
2 “The justest of all views”: To Mardi and Beyond with Agnes D. Cannon
Paweł Jędrzejko
Melville’s Concept of the Artist
The Poet as Entertainer
The Poet as Mouthpiece
The Poet as Interpreter of Ideas and Objects
The Poet as a Visionary
The Poet as Savior
The Poet as Mythmaker
Marginalia
Coda
Dialogue I: Transcendence / Existence
3 “In the Dust of Wisdom”: Embracing Transcendence
John Matteson
4 “And I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee”: Embracing Annihilation
Paweł Jędrzejko
Dialogue II: To Be or Not To Be
5 “Insurrection on the Lonely Billows”: Ocean and Freedom (A Prologue by way of Douglass)
John Matteson
6 On Voyaging and Bildung (The Case of Wellingborough/Redburn)
Paweł Jędrzejko
Innocence. Pro-Visions
The Voyage: Towards Experience
Farewell, Dear Delusion: Toward Post-Visions
Coda
7 “Accursed Jacket That Thou Art”: The Self at Stake
Paweł Jędrzejko
White-Jacket: A Mirage of Familiarity
Once a Character …
Either/Or: Existence/Being
Transcending the White Jacket
A Self. To Be Defined…
8 “The Little Lower Layer”: Anxiety and the Courage to Be in Moby-Dick
John Matteson
Tillich and Anxiety: An Overview
Courage through Participation: Ishmael
Courage and Radical Free Will: Ahab
Courage Through Faith: Starbuck
Conclusion
Dialogue III: Cannibalism / Capitalism
9 “Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” or On the Value of Photo/Sensitivity
Paweł Jędrzejko
10 Adding "Insult to Injury”: On Cannibalistic Appetites and Indigestion
Paweł Jędrzejko
The Sea-Drive
The Feast of Victory
The Appetite for Status
Ocean’s Cannibalism
11 “Duty and Profit Hand in Hand”: Melville, Whaling, and the Failure of Heroic Materialism
John Matteson
Dialogue IV: Ironies / Tragedies
12 “Unfathomable Cravings” and “Enchanted Heysts”: The Ironic Rescuer in Pierre and Victory
John Matteson
13 Pip, the Intolerable Third
Paweł Jędrzejko
Biography
Paweł Jędrzejko is Associate Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, and a faculty member in the PhD Programme in Studies in English Literatures, Language, and Translation at Sapienza University of Rome. His research spans nineteenth-century American literature, literary and cultural theory, comparative studies, and translation philosophy, with particular emphasis on Herman Melville, dialogic ethics, and the philosophy of friendship. He is the author of the first monographs on Herman Melville published in Polish and has co-edited numerous international volumes and journal issues devoted to American literature and cultural theory. He is a co-author of Atmospheric Health, Nature, and Well-being: Towards a Philosophy of the Garden (Routledge, 2025). He served as President of the International American Studies Association (2021–2023), is Co-Founder and Co–Editor-in-Chief of the Review of International American Studies, and has held ministerial and international advisory appointments in higher education policy, open access, and academic governance.
John Matteson is Distinguished Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He holds an A.B. in history from Princeton University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. His scholarship focuses on nineteenth-century American literature, intellectual history, and the intersections of literary, moral, and legal thought. He is the author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, which received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and The Lives of Margaret Fuller, awarded the 2012 Ann M. Sperber Prize for Best Biography of a Journalist, as well as A Worse Place than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation (2021). He has published widely in leading journals, including Leviathan, New England Quarterly, and Harvard Theological Review, and is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
