Yearning for a Friend: the Desire for Male Intimacy in Melville's Clarel
| Autor: | Tong, Xiaowei, 童小偉 |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 106 This paper discusses the desire for male intimacy in Melville’s epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Male intimacy is intense friendship, the desire for which partakes of spiritual and psychological aspects of homosexual desires but differs from them in that it is not sexual. As an indicative instance, the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is more appropriately called “male intimacy” than “the homosexual.” This paper argues that Clarel’s yearning for Celio and Vine is purely spiritual and that the Lyonese is not an object of desire for Clarel. This view is a challenge to many earlier critics’ belief that Clarel’s spiritual pursuit is tinged with eroticism. Their belief, as this paper will demonstrate, results from a limited reading of the poem. That is, they insist on some ambiguous statements without enough regard to the context. This paper attempts to read Clarel closely and comprehensively. It will resort to some external texts, such as Emerson’s writings, Hawthorne’s novels, and Melville’s correspondence, as well as his poem “After the Pleasure Party.” The body of this paper matches the structure of the poem: the four chapters correspond respectively to its four parts. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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