Herman Melville's Genius: The Author of Moby-Dick on How to Think About Religion and Other Ideologies - Softcover

Troy, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1468160702 ISBN 13: 9781468160703

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Herman Melville was a genius endowed with a remarkable capacity to detect fraud and humbug. From the composition of Moby-Dick in 1851 until his death in 1891, his writings are slyly disguised and damning exposés of the flawed assumptions and ideologies that prevailed in his day. Similarly flawed assumptions and ideologies are just as prominent today. With the powerful perception and reasoning of innate genius, Melville's writings clarify the causes behind, for example, the ideological polarization and gridlock in today's politics, the growing hostilities between religions, and the flawed ethics driving Wall Street. But he also implies a very powerful solution to these problems. His writings provide a template for thinking effectively about religion, economics, politics, philosophy, the role of corporations, and far more. This book makes clear for the first time that beneath the familiar persona of a colorful adventurer and great story-teller, Melville was also a first-rate philosopher offering valuable and practicable solutions to real-world issues.

About this title

From the Author:

By modern scientific measures, Herman Melville was a genius. His standards of reason and knowledge illuminate the hidden causes of many problems confronted by individuals and by societies collectively. His insights into the nature of sound reasoning have remained largely unappreciated because he expressed them in rich literary forms that make frequent use of enigma and ambiguity. My goal in this book has been to clarify his standards and explain the reasons for the pervasive ambiguities. Ironically, he used these devices to achieve clarity about the nature and limits of knowledge. It is my conviction that awareness of his standards of reasoning can contribute to greater rigor and practicality in our individual thinking and also in our collective dialogue.

Herman Melville's Genius was written concurrently with my historical novel, Buried: The Discernment of Pagans in Ancient Rome, and though it's not obvious, the two books share similarities. The novel is set in the Roman world around 400 AD, but it investigates many of the themes used by Melville. It's my view that Melville's mature writings were deeply influenced by pre-Christian writers including Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, and Zeno of Elea. Melville saw and appreciated the clarity of their worldview--which is inconsistent with the Christian worldview--and transferred that ancient wisdom from Homer's fleet of vessels on the wine-dark Mediterranean to the great sailing vessels on the Atlantic and Pacific during the nineteenth century. I examine his exploration of this topic throughout his works but focus on Moby-Dick; Pierre; "Bartleby, the Scrivener"; "Benito Cereno"; The Confidence-Man; Clarel; and Billy Budd. All of these works consistently pursue the same theme and dramatize it using a remarkable range of literary tones, styles, and genres.

From the Back Cover:

Moby-Dick famously gives readers a sense of the deep mystery of God's role in human existence. In this book Frank Troy explains how Melville achieved this mysterious effect that has been attained by only a handful of great authors. Drawing on the scientific research into the nature of genius, Troy demonstrates that in Moby-Dick and later works, Melville clearly displayed a genius-level understanding of religion, philosophy, and ancient wisdom traditions. Troy's careful analysis shows that Melville's mode of reasoning can be learned by most people and is applicable to current secular ideologies such as political and economic theory. Offering many fresh insights and interpretations, this book clarifies an underappreciated unity in Melville's work and describes in clear and fascinating detail the psychological characteristics that made Melville one of the world's great literary geniuses.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1468160702
• ISBN 13: 9781468160703
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 310