Overview

Herman Melville’s oeuvre sustains a fundamental tension among self, society, and others. Sacred Uncertainty explores religious difference that arises from these many voices, both within American culture and around the world. Melville’s work is notably shot through with allusions to other writers and thinkers, whom he regarded as his truest interlocutors—the figures of genius from whom he received, as he eloquently stated it in “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” a “shock of recognition.” There is almost certainly no more concrete or reliable way to get at Melville’s affirmations of (and arguments with) these interlocutors than in the markings and annotations that appear in his copies of many of their works, so Yothers examines Melville’s marginalia for clues to Melville’s thinking about self, others, and difference. His interrogations yield a richer understanding of one of the more vexing aspects of the great American novelist’s work.

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9780810130715

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Reviews

[T]he scholarly value of Sacred Uncertainty is . . . best measured by the narrative arc it sustains. From this vantage point, Yothers makes a vital contribution to our understanding of Melville's religious thought and its importance for his artistic project. As a contribution to Melville biography as well as criticism, this is a book not to be missed by any reader serious about connecting Melville's works to a larger understanding of his authorial project. --Leviathan

"""[T]he scholarly value of Sacred Uncertainty is . . . best measured by the narrative arc it sustains. From this vantage point, Yothers makes a vital contribution to our understanding of Melville's religious thought and its importance for his artistic project. As a contribution to Melville biography as well as criticism, this is a book not to be missed by any reader serious about connecting Melville's works to a larger understanding of his authorial project."" --Leviathan"

Author Information

Brian Yothers is a professor of English at the University of Texas, El Paso, USA. He is the author of Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticismand America’s Most Elusive Author and The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876. Yothers is the associate editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, a coeditor of the travel section of the Melville Electronic Library, an associate editor for Melville’s Marginalia Online, a coeditor of the interdisciplinary journal Journeys, and an editor for the book series Literary Criticism in Perspective.

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