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Redburn's Prosy Old Guidebook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Willard Thorp*
Affiliation:
Princeton University

Extract

I will not quote thee, old Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted world; for your antiquities would only be skipped and dishonoured by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing from a guidebook—the most vulgar and ignominious of thefts!—Redburn.

The purpose of this paper is to add another chapter to the constantly growing account of Melville as a writer who, in calculating his effects, often had recourse to travel diaries and guidebooks to furnish him with factual information and with dramatic episodes, which appear as the authentic experiences of his characters. In this instance the book is Redburn, the novel which he regarded as one of the least of his works, but which many besides John Masefield have admired as a spirited and sometimes harrowing narrative of a boy's running away to sea.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1938 , pp. 1146 - 1156
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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