SOURCE: “Melville's Use of Non-Novelistic Conventions in Pierre,” in The Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 48, 3^rd Quarter, 1967, pp. 141-45.

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 dramatic and epic genres.

In his essay “Melville's Search for Form” James E. Miller, Jr., says that Melville “was not content to accept without question the dominant form of his day—the novel. Instead, he adopted the outward shape but constantly pushed beyond the apparent limits. There is hardly a kind of literature he did not sample or assimilate: travel book, sea yarn, sociological study, philosophical tract, allegory, epic, domestic or historical romance, tragedy or comedy.”¹ In Pierre Melville perhaps came closer to the form of the traditional novel than he did in any other work. At the same...