Sea-Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present

Bert Bender

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1989

Sea-Brothers

The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present

Bert Bender
Illustrator: Tony Angell

https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512814309

Overview
Contents

About this book

Sea-Brothers offers the most extensive analysis to date of the sea and its meaning in American literature. On the basis of his study of Melville, Crane, London, Hemingway, Matthiessen, and ten lesser-known sea-writers, Bert Bender argues that the tradition of American sea fiction did not end with the opening of the western frontier and the replacement of sailing ships by steamers. Rather, he demonstrates its continuity and vitality, identifying a central vision within the tradition and showing how particular authors draw from, transform, and contribute to it.

What is most distinctive about American sea fiction, Bender contends, is its visionary, often mystical, response to the biological world and to man's perceived place in the larger universe. When Melville envisioned the sea as the essential element of life, indeed as life itself, he changed the course of American sea fiction by introducing the relevance of biological thought. But his meditations on the whale and "the ungraspable phantom of life" project a different reality from that envisioned by his successors. In American sea fiction after Melville, the influence of Origin of Species is as powerful as that of Moby Dick or the theme of sailing ships being displaced by steam.

The ideal of brotherhood so central to American sea fiction was severely compromised by the biological reality of a competitive, warring nature. Twentieth-century sea fiction has continued to center on the biological world and address the possibility of democratic brotherhood, but the issues were fundamentally changed by Darwin's theories.

This book will be a valuable source for students and scholars of American literature and will interest readers of sea fiction.

Author / Editor information

Burt Bender is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University and the author of various articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Tony Angell, a sculptor and painter, has illustrated Owls and Marine Birds and Mammals of Puget Sound.

Reviews

"Anyone interested in the role that adventure fiction in general, and sea fiction in particular, has played in injecting life into American literature, will find good reading, well documented scholarship, and some strong-stated theses in Sea-Brothers."—American Studies International

"The study offers the most extensive analysis to date of the sea and its meaning in American literature."—London Review of Books

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface: The Sea, and the Blue Water of It Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Note on Texts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
Chapter 1. The Voyage in American Sea Fiction after the Pilgrim, the Acushnet, and the Beagle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. Meditation and the Life-Waters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Chapter 3. The Shipwrecked Soul Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
Chapter 4. The Jonah Feeling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter 5. The Experience of Brotherhood in “The Open Boat” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Chapter 6. Jack London in the Tradition of American Sea Fiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
Chapter 7. From Sail to Steam: Sailor-Writers of the 1860s and 1870s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
Chapter 8. From Sail to Steam: Sailor-Writers of the 1880s and 1890s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
Chapter 9. Hemingway: Coming to the Stream Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Chapter 10. Hemingway's Sea Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Chapter 11. Peter Matthiessen and the Tradition in Modern Time Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Chapter 12. Far Tortuga Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
Photographs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Chronology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 286
Illustrations
- Other: 33 illus.
Keywords: Literature; Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: November 16, 2015
ISBN: 9781512814309