Melville's intervisionary network : Balzac, Hawthorne, and Realism in the American renaissance / john Haydock.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The romances of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor, are usually examined from some setting almost exclusively American. European or other planetary contexts are subordinated to local considerations. But while this isolated approach plays well in an arena constructed on American exclusiveness, it does not express the reality of the literary processes swirling around Melville in the middle of the nineteenth century. A series of expanding literary and technological networks was active that made his writing part of a global complex. Honoré de Balzac, popular French writer and creator of realism in the novel, was also in the web of these same networks, both preceding and at the height of Melville?s creativity. Because they engaged in similar intentions, there developed an almost inevitable attraction that brought their works together. Until recently, however, Balzac has not been recognized as a significant influence on Melville during his most creative period. Over the last decade, scholars began to explore literary networks by new methodologies, and the criticism developed out of these strategies pertains usually to modernist, postcolonial, contemporary situations.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed January 31, 2017).

Machine generated contents note: ch. One Networked Melville -- ch. Two International Balzac -- ch. Three M. de l'Aubepine -- ch. Four Hawthorne's Secret? -- ch. Five Transvisionary Translating -- ch. Six Balzac's Types at Sea -- ch. Seven Physiology of Thinking -- ch. Eight American Comedie -- ch. Nine Toward the Bouddha chretien -- ch. Ten Clue in the Labyrinth.

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