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Sources and Symbols for Melville's Confidence-Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John W. Shroeder
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Extract

Melville criticism seems fated to a slow and uncertain growth. We have come a long way, to be sure, beyond the author who dismissed Melville as one among “several minor writers resident in the city or state of New York.” But one chief fault we seem not to have corrected: it is perhaps not over-rash to say that this criticism learns only reluctantly from what it has already accomplished. We know, for instance, that Melville's literary borrowings in such a work as Moby-Dick are worth close scrutiny; we also know that the allegory and the symbol lurk everywhere in Melville's pages. But our knowledge is not regularly put to use as a hypothetical principle for the examination of other works. Now I suggest that there is still a good bit to be done with these tools alone, and in this present paper I mean to try to do a part of it. I propose to identify and follow out certain of the sources and symbols which went into one of Melville's least-known works, The Confidence-Man.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , June 1951, pp. 363 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 363 The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857). The Complete Works of Herman Melville (London, 1922–24), Vol. xii.

Since writing the paper from which this present study grew, I have availed myself of an opportunity to read Elizabeth Foster's excellent unpublished dissertation, “Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: Its Origins and Meaning.” In several of my findings, large and small, Miss Foster has anticipated me; I have tried to credit her in my notes with the most important of these anticipations. Miss Foster is at present editing The Confidence-Man for the new uniform edition of Melville's works; her introduction and notes for this edition, when published, will certainly prove a major stimulus in subsequent study and evaluation of this neglected book. I wish to add here that Miss Foster has been most gracious and helpful in discussing with me the question of our independent discoveries.

Among the other extant discussions of The Confidence-Man Nathalia Wright's and Richard Chase's are especially valuable. Miss Wright, however, whose insights concerning this work are many and excellent, makes no attempt to formulate a complete symbolic structure for the book as a whole—Melville's Use of the Bible (Durham, N. C, 1949), passim—and Mr. Chase's stimulating interpretation is marred by a number of factual inaccuracies—“Melville's Confidence-Man,” Kenyon Review, xi (Winter 1949), 122–140; Herman Melville: A Critical Study (New York, 1949), pp. 185–209.

Note 2 in page 364 The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston, 1883), ii, 212–234.

Note 3 in page 366 The Pilgrim's Progress (Boston and New York, 1926), pp. 158, 40.

Note 4 in page 366 Herman Melville, p. 190. Miss Foster has noted the significant references to Heaven and Hell in this passage. See also Wright, p. 102.

Note 5 in page 370 Pages 25, 34, 35.

Note 6 in page 370 Page 44. Miss Foster has noted many of these events; her discussion of their import is admirable.

Note 7 in page 371 Page 177. Miss Foster has again anticipated me in assigning a diabolic character to the confidence-man.

Note 8 in page 375 Herman Melville, p. 205.

Note 9 in page 375 Again, the “sleeper” is helpful. When the lad laughs, the man in the bunk mutters: “The divils are laughing now, are they? To bed, with ye, ye divils, and no more of ye” (p. 326). Miss Fosters notes fully the significance of the many references to the Devil in the book.

Note 10 in page 378 “Hate Indians?” exclaims the cosmopolitan, “Why should he or anybody else hate Indians? I admire Indians” (p. 188).

Note 11 in page 379 For a recent interpretation of this episode, see D. G. Hoffman's “Melville's ‘Story of China Aster’, ” AL, xxii (May 1950), 137–149.