SOURCE: Press, Roger C. “The Unicorn and the Eagle: The Old World and the New World in Melville's Redburn.” Arizona Quarterly 41, no. 2 (summer 1985): 169-82.

In the following essay, Press claims that Melville's presentation of the relationship between Europe and America in Redburn is far more complicated than the usual dichotomy between decadence and innocence.

One image in Melville's Redburn (1849) that presents a major theme is the sign above the inn where the crew of the narrator's ship, the Highlander, eat during their six weeks' stay in Liverpool: “Here we stopped before the sign of a Baltimore Clipper, flanked on one side by a gilded bunch of grapes and a bottle, and on the other by the British Unicorn and American Eagle, lying down by each other, like the lion and lamb in the millenium.—A very judicious and tasty device, showing a delicate apprehension of the propriety of...