Violence and Testimonial Truth in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This essay explores thematic concerns of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor such as violence and justice from the perspective of testimonial truth. To do so, this study first examines the motivation of each main character’s testimonial action, and after that, its sincerity. While Billy’s violence for his innocence and Claggart’s false witness because of his hatred of Billy both signify the perversion of sincerity in testimony, we see that only the legal testimony of Captain Vere lends itself to the secular frame of truth-telling. Such a recognition of secularism draws on a moral dilemma between justice and the law. In that sense, comparative studies tried in this essay, such as Melville’s connection with John Brown and with Henry David Thoreau, explicate the historical and intellectual contexts for the author’s critique of violence and justice. Especially, Hannah Arendt’s theory about the relationship between action and speech deserves our critical attention. Like Arendt criticizes the happening of ‘mute violence’ in the public sphere, the notion of “demanding action while ridiculing talk” as expressed in John Brown’s attack in 1859 can be applied as well to Billy’s violence. When divine justice with violence is at odds with human testimony, its judgment remains controversial.
Abstract
This essay explores thematic concerns of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor such as violence and justice from the perspective of testimonial truth. To do so, this study first examines the motivation of each main character’s testimonial action, and after that, its sincerity. While Billy’s violence for his innocence and Claggart’s false witness because of his hatred of Billy both signify the perversion of sincerity in testimony, we see that only the legal testimony of Captain Vere lends itself to the secular frame of truth-telling. Such a recognition of secularism draws on a moral dilemma between justice and the law. In that sense, comparative studies tried in this essay, such as Melville’s connection with John Brown and with Henry David Thoreau, explicate the historical and intellectual contexts for the author’s critique of violence and justice. Especially, Hannah Arendt’s theory about the relationship between action and speech deserves our critical attention. Like Arendt criticizes the happening of ‘mute violence’ in the public sphere, the notion of “demanding action while ridiculing talk” as expressed in John Brown’s attack in 1859 can be applied as well to Billy’s violence. When divine justice with violence is at odds with human testimony, its judgment remains controversial.
참고문헌 (27)
- Arendt, Hannah, "Crises of the Republic" (1972), Harcourt Brace
- Arendt, Hannah, "The Human Condition" (1958), U of Chicago P
- Arendt, Hannah, "On Revolution" (1963), Viking
- Bakhtin, Mikhail, "Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics" (1984), U of Minnesota P
- Berthold, Dennis, "A Companion to Herman Melville", pp.149~164 (2006), Blackwell
- Carson, D. A., "The Gospel According to John" (1991), Eerdmans
- 조규형, "『모비딕』 주인공론의 비평사적 조망과 전망:연결망 공간의 주인공", 근대영미소설, 27(1), pp.27~53 (2020), 한국근대영미소설학회
- Delbanco, Andrew, "Melville : His World and Work" (2005), Vintage
- Douglass, Lawrence, "Discursive Limits: Narrative and Judgment in Billy Budd", Mosaic, 27(4), pp.141~159 (1994)
- Felman, Shoshana, "Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History" (1992), Routledge
- Gougeon, Leon, "Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform" (1990), U of Georgia P
- Johnson, Barbara, "Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd", Studies in Romanticism, 18(4), pp.567~599 (1979)
- Melville, Herman, "Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)", ~ (1891)
- Billy Budd, Bartleby, "Introd. and note by Peter Coviello", pp.243~328 (2016), Penguin
- Midler, Robert, "Critical Essays on Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor" (1989), G. K. Hall & Co
- Montaigne, Michel de, "The Complete Essays of Montaigne" (1965), Stanford UP
- Reynolds, David S., "John Brown, Abolitionist" (2005), Vintage Books
- Ricoeur, Paul, "Memory, History, Forgetting. Trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer" (2004), U of Chicago P
- Rodensky, Lisa, "The Crime in Mind: Criminal Responsibility and the Victorian Novel" (2003), Oxford UP
- Schiffman, Joseph, "Melville’s Final Stage: A Re-Examination of Billy Budd Criticism", American Literature, 22(2), pp.128~136 (1950)
- Stern, Milton R., "The Fine Hammered Steel of Herman Melville" (1957), U of Illinois P
- Thoreau, Henry David, "Henry David Thoreau: Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers", pp.1~25 (1963), Harvest House
- Thoreau, Henry David, "Henry David Thoreau: Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers", pp.42~65
- Trilling, Lionel, "Sincerity and Authenticity" (1972), Harvard UP
- Watson, E. L. Grant, "Melville’s Billy Budd and the Critics", pp.136~139 (1968), Wadsworth
- Weiner, Susan, "Law in Art: Melville’s Major Fiction and Nineteenth-Century American Law" (1992), Peter Lang