By Thomas F. Bertonneau | 0 Comments | 
Print
Melville’s Typee (1846) and the Case for Civilization
from The Brussels Journal, May 19, 2009
Herman Melville
My subject is Herman Melville, and more specifically Melville’s case for civilization, but I would like to approach his Typee (1846), where he makes that case, through a preamble having to do with the figure against whose arguments Melville stakes his own: Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I
There is a shadow-side in the Western tradition that takes the form of a recurrent rebellion against reality. Already in the early Fourth century BC Plato identified an impulse arising from the matrix of civilized life that is wildly uncivilized and which expresses itself, in animosity that can be either generalized or narrowly focused, against civic order, technical achievement, and social distinctions arising out of a consensual recognition of merit. . . . More
Thomas F. Bertonneau
Thomas F. Bertonneau is a Visiting Professor of English at the State University of New York College, Oswego, New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (UCLA, 1990).
