19세기 미국 사회의 한계:멜빌(Herman Melville)의 「서기, 바틀비(Bartleby, The Scirbner)」와 「베니토 세니로(Benito Cereno)」를 중심으로

Abstract

This article concerns Melville's severe but honest criticism on the maretrialistic and self-celebrating society on nineteenth-century America in the two tales, "Bartleby, the Scribner" and "Benito Cereno." In these two tales the writer demonstrates the conflicts between the narrators, 'the representative Americans' versus their chief characters about whom the narrators have presented to us. Although the lawyer and Amasa Delano believe they are writing a tale about the character they have experienced, they can tell us little about Bartleby and Benito Cereno, yet they unwittingley reveal about themselves. The two narrators gropes toward an understanding of dark ironies that their cheery American optimsm has denied. Melvilles intends the more honest of his American readers to recognize that their own innocence shades into credulity, and that their own Christian benevalence is blinding them to human contradictions and limitations in a American conscousness.