earticle

영어

Hwang, Jaekwang. “The Life of Text and the Text of Life in Herman Melville's Pierre or The Ambiguities.” Studies in English Language & Literature 39.3 (2013): 69-87. This paper explores the manifold aspects of the textuality in Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities in terms of his anti-essentialist tendency toward his art and non-formist aesthetic which departs from the tenets of the traditional organic view of literature. These aspects of the novel will also be discussed in the language of Deconstruction. In Pierre, the life of Pierre is paralleled with that of a plant and a text. With the abrupt ending coincided with the untimely death of the novel's hero, Pierre thwarts the end-oriented readers' desire to see the truth of the novel revealed at the end of the text and the New Critical obsession with a unified whole in literary works. Melville renders his text performative and functional rather than foundational by directing the reader's attention to what the text does rather than what it says. The novel's ambiguous open form serves for the same purpose, enticing the reader's active participation in making the text grow even beyond its ending. (Keimyung University)