Pierre: or, The Ambiguities Summary Herman Melville
Everything you need to understand or teach
Pierre by Herman Melville.
Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays,
lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.
Biography EssayHerman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing f...
Read more
American author Herman Melville (1819-1891) is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His work was a response, though often in a negative or ambivalent way, to the romantic movement that dominated Americ...
Read more
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see th...
Read more
Herman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing fame, especially...
Read more
"You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in," wrote Herman Melville in Hawthorne the pseudonymous, two part review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) that he publish...
Read more
Herman Melville drew upon his adventurous travels on sea and land for the primary materials of his greatest fiction and poetry. Out of his experiences in the merchant service (1839), the whaling indus...
Read more
In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1929, Mumford links the themes of Pierre with events in Melville's life while he was writing the novel, concluding that “Pi...
Read more
In the following essay, Higgins and Parker consider the various ways in which Pierre fails as a novel, at the same time proclaiming it the best psychological novel that had been written in English by ...
Read more
In the following essay, Gowler discusses the role of God and belief in Pierre, concluding that the novel portrays the breakdown of religious systems and “the absurdity of the human condition.&#...
Read more
In the following essay, Lewis explores Pierre in terms of the various characters' responses to the incongruous, suggesting that this theme contributes to the overall ambiguity of the work.
That...
Read more
In the following essay, Dimock discusses the various characters' quests for knowledge in Pierre and concludes that, since the self proves to be unknowable in the novel, all the individual quest...
Read more
In the following essay, Gray explores Pierre as “an artifice that calls attention to its own artificiality” and suggests that the novel is a predecessor of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale...
Read more
In the following essay, Canaday explores the connection between Pierre's psychological problems and his becoming a male member of a female world as he moves from Saddle Meadows to New York City...
Read more
In the following essay, Egan examines Isabel's story as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age narrative, and interprets it in the light of several key concepts of Romanticism.
Isabel, the “d...
Read more
In the following essay, Wilson notes that Melville attributes Pierre's psychological problems, especially his belief in his own capacity for heroic action, to his sentimental education.
Pierre;...
Read more
In the following essay, Simmons suggests that Pierre presents the problem of uncontrolled imagination, and provides evidence from Melville's reading, which includes the works of Isaac Taylor.
F...
Read more
In the following essay, Wald characterizes Pierre as an endless succession of narrative voices and perspectives that requires the readers' participation in making conclusions about the events o...
Read more
In the following essay, Gupta maintains that in writing Pierre Melville felt that the conventions of the novel were inadequate and restrictive, and thus he borrowed specific literary devices from the ...
Read more
In the following essay, Brown interprets Pierre as Melville's parody and critique of the typical sentimental domestic novel of his day, focusing on the author's handling of the role of t...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Scheer examines the relationship between Pierre and the narrator of Pierre and explores the nature of self-knowledge and virtue.
1. the Epistemological Ground: Or, the Expedi...
Read more
In the following essay, Rowe discusses Pierre as Melville's critique of nineteenth-century literary production, suggesting that the novel is his farewell to writing as he conceived it before Pi...
Read more
In the following excerpt, Creech interprets Pierre as a covertly homoerotic novel, with Pierre's attraction to his father manifested through his feelings for Isabel.
Pierre's Two Fathers...
Read more
In the following essay, Nixon examines Pierre in its historical context, maintaining that Melville preferred ambiguity to political allusion.
In a now rather famous chapter at the midpoint of Pierre; ...
Read more
In the following essay, Rachman explores Pierre in the context of male hysteria, asserting that Pierre's nervous exhaustion both shapes and makes problematic the idea that the novel was written...
Read more
In the following essay, Kelley suggests that Melville's notion of domesticity based on the brother/sister rather than husband/wife relationship was too extreme for his middle-class readers, and...
Read more
In the following essay, Canaday explores Melville's treatment of the individual's need to follow his or her moral imperative—even at the cost of defying social convention—a...
Read more
In the following essay, Bach discusses the various levels of narration in Pierre and suggests that the alternating narrative voices help to unify the work.
In late 1851 Herman Melville, weary from his...
Read more
In the following essay, Holder discusses the shifts in narrative tone, attitude, and mood in Pierre, conceding that, in the end, there is little to account for the novel's contradictions and fr...
Read more
In the following essay, Milder suggests that in Pierre Melville set out to write a parody of the romance novel that would reveal the depravity of which mankind is capable.
With the publication of the ...
Read more
In the following essay, Kellner explores Melville's treatment of several psychological themes in Pierre, focusing on the relationship between ideal love and instinctive sex, and between sex and...
Read more
In the following essay, Parker examines documentary evidence such as Melville's correspondence with his publishers and reviews of Moby-Dick to suggest reasons why the author's focus on P...
Read more
In the following essay, Strickland asserts that, while Melville's handling of imagery in Pierre provides a kind of coherence for the work, the novel remains ultimately “inconsistent and ...
Read more
Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Critical Essay by Lewis Mumford
