This valuable new addition to Melville studies offers a ground-breaking interpretation of Melville's last published novel, one of the most complex texts in American literature and a work that has long been noted for the divergent critical views it has elicited. Reading the novel as a generic hybrid of narrative satire and apolyptic vision, Cook situates the novel in its implicit theological, historical, and biographical contexts: he examines the novel's relation to Melville's heterodox ideas of the deity, to the increasingly commercialized cultural milieu of antebellum America, and to Melville's own life and literary career. Uncovering a wealth of new data on the novel's satirical applications, including its covert use of Melville's friends and family for character models, Cook offers a compelling reading of The Confidence-Man - one that is sure to influence our future conception of its creator.
- ISBN10 0313294046
- ISBN13 9780313294044
- Publish Date 30 April 1996
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher ABC-CLIO
- Imprint Praeger Publishers Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 296
- Language English