ENGL 051F. Moby-Dick in the World

Today there is no more canonical nineteenth-century American novel than Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. But when Herman Melville published it in 1851, critics were mystified, readers were uninterested, and most of the copies of the book burnt in a fire at the publisher’s warehouse. This course will study Moby-Dick as both a mesmerizingly singular text and one deeply embedded in the world in which it first flopped-or breached, depending on your perspective.

We will read Moby-Dick slowly over the course of the semester. Simultaneously, students will situate the novel in the context of mid-nineteenth-century slavery, colonialism and imperialism, and the rise of industrial capitalism, through assigned readings and independent research. We will explore Melville’s source material and consider a range of literary criticism that seeks to understand the novel’s own experiments with-and joyous repudiation of-knowledge production. The course will culminate in the organization of a 25-hour Moby-Dick readathon that will invite the whole campus into the vortex of this hilarious, moving, boring, maddening book.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Fall 2027 Cohen.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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