Melville's Bibles - Softcover

Pardes, Ilana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520254554 ISBN 13: 9780520254558

Publisher: University of California Press, 2008

Synopsis

Many writers in antebellum America sought to reinvent the Bible, but no one, Ilana Pardes argues, was as insistent as Melville on redefining biblical exegesis while doing so. In Moby-Dick he not only ventured to fashion a grand new inverted Bible in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume center stage, but also aspired to comment on every imaginable mode of biblical interpretation, calling for a radical reconsideration of the politics of biblical reception. In Melville's Bibles, Pardes traces Melville's response to a whole array of nineteenth-century exegetical writings―literary scriptures, biblical scholarship, Holy Land travel narratives, political sermons, and women's bibles. She shows how Melville raised with unparalleled verve the question of what counts as Bible and what counts as interpretation.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"This is a splendid book, showing Ilana Pardes as a scholar-critic at the height of her powers. Distinguished and full of originality, Melville's Bibles brings into play a richly nuanced and minutely informed sense of the multiple roles of the Bible in antebellum American culture. This work is an important new understanding of the nature of Melville's major novel."―Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

"With a command of Biblical scholarship and a keen textual sensitivity, Pardes deftly analyzes the ways in which Melville incorporates Biblical language, genre, plot, character, and debate in Moby-Dick. Few critics have captured Melville's Biblical apprehensions and pretensions as well as Pardes or with her intellectual range and sympathy."―Samuel Otter, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author:

Ilana Pardes is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach and The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (UC Press).

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0520254554
• ISBN 13: 9780520254558
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206