earticle

영어

Hermen Melville’s The Confidence-Man is an enigmatic work that defies easy categorization and challenges readers with its intricate web of absurdities. The ambiguousness, incongruity, and inconclusiveness manifested at every level of The Confidence-Man have often been interpreted by critics as evidence of failure. However, through a close examination of the radical absurdities in the novel’s formal and thematic delineation, this paper aims to unravel the underlying political, philosophical, and literary implications Melville attempts to explore in this paradoxical work. By juxtaposing Melville’s novelistic experiment with Deleuze’s reading of Melville and theorization on the concept of paradox, this paper also sheds light on the new possibilities Melville reveals in the use of nonsense as a means of reorientation and reconfiguration of the way one encounters and engages with the world.