Melville's anatomies

Print version:

Losing face in Typee. Of cannibalism: eating the body in Cook, Krusenstern, and Porter ; Of tattooing: reading the body in Langsdorff and Melville

Jumping out of one's skin in White-Jacket. The anatomical impulse: ship, state, and body ; Slaves: the scene of flogging in Douglass, Pennington, and Northup ; Sailors: the analogy with slavery in Leech, McNally, Browne, and Dana ; Flogged free: White-Jacket's emancipation ; Sailing on

Getting inside heads in Moby-Dick. Middle-aged man with a skull: Samuel George ; Morton and the quest for cranial contents ; Dry bones: the laws of anatomy in antebellum ethnology ; Skin deep: the ethnological critiques of Douglass, Brown, and Apess ; A sight of sights to see: cetology and ethnology in Moby-Dick ; To look and to know

Penetrating eyes in Pierre. American views: Natural features and national character ; The loving eye: Thomas Cole and the visual embrace ; The hungry eye: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the taste for scenery ; The dissolving eye: Susan Cooper and the persistence of vision ; Strange eye-fish with wings: Melville's clogged optics

Inscribed hearts in Pierre. Sentiment American style: the heart on the page ; Men of feeling: Donald Grant Mitchell's treatises concerning the sentimental affections ; A little half-worn shoe: Fanny Fern's emotional investments ; Blood, ink, and tears: the strangling diastole and systole of Pierre