Melville & the Poetics of Individualism

In Empire for Liberty, Wai Chee Dimock argues that Melville’s fiction interrogates the core American belief in individualism by showing how ideas of personal freedom are inseparable from the nation’s imperial ambitions. Drawing on works from Typee to Billy Budd, Dimock demonstrates that Melville inherits the rhetoric of self-reliance but exposes its contradictions: the autonomous, self-creating individual celebrated in U.S. political culture depends on—and is compromised by—systems of domination, expansion, and racial hierarchy. Melville’s “poetics of individualism” therefore reveals the ideological tension within America’s claim to be an “empire for liberty,” uncovering a national myth in which liberty for some is produced through the unfreedom of others. Condition. ASome dirta nd scratcjes and signature, otherwise very good - Title: Empire for Liberty - Author: Wai-chee Dimock - Subject: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism - Publisher: Princeton Paperbacks ご覧いただきありがとうございます。