Pilar Martinez Benedi is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of L'Aquila, Italy.Ralph James Savarese is Professor of English at Grinnell College, USA.

• Introduction: Far Borders Chapter 1. Hard of Meaning: Suspicious Sensing in “The Apple-Tree Table” and The Confidence ManChapter 2. Phantom Empathy: Ahab, Race, and Mirror-Touch Synesthesia Chapter 3. “First Principles”: Animism in Pierre Chapter 4. Billy Fo(u)wl: Stuttering and the Perverse Triumph of the Perceptual Afterword: I and My Neurological Difference Acknowledgments Index Bibliography

In this provocative study, Pilar Martínez Benedí and Ralph James Savarese reveal the great anticipator Herman Melville’s illumination of the hidden life of the sensory and the neural unconscious. In a work more dialogic than diagnostic, Martínez Benedí and Savarese explore Melville’s advocacy for the perceptual and his ardent overcoming of biased categories and limiting social constructs. They cast wildchild and cosmopolitan Melville as the bard of neuroatypicality.

Pilar Martinez Benedi is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of L'Aquila, Italy.Ralph James Savarese is Professor of English at Grinnell College, USA.

• Introduction: Far Borders Chapter 1. Hard of Meaning: Suspicious Sensing in “The Apple-Tree Table” and The Confidence ManChapter 2. Phantom Empathy: Ahab, Race, and Mirror-Touch Synesthesia Chapter 3. “First Principles”: Animism in Pierre Chapter 4. Billy Fo(u)wl: Stuttering and the Perverse Triumph of the Perceptual Afterword: I and My Neurological Difference Acknowledgments Index Bibliography

In this provocative study, Pilar Martínez Benedí and Ralph James Savarese reveal the great anticipator Herman Melville’s illumination of the hidden life of the sensory and the neural unconscious. In a work more dialogic than diagnostic, Martínez Benedí and Savarese explore Melville’s advocacy for the perceptual and his ardent overcoming of biased categories and limiting social constructs. They cast wildchild and cosmopolitan Melville as the bard of neuroatypicality.

Pilar Martinez Benedi is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of L'Aquila, Italy.Ralph James Savarese is Professor of English at Grinnell College, USA.

• Introduction: Far Borders Chapter 1. Hard of Meaning: Suspicious Sensing in “The Apple-Tree Table” and The Confidence ManChapter 2. Phantom Empathy: Ahab, Race, and Mirror-Touch Synesthesia Chapter 3. “First Principles”: Animism in Pierre Chapter 4. Billy Fo(u)wl: Stuttering and the Perverse Triumph of the Perceptual Afterword: I and My Neurological Difference Acknowledgments Index Bibliography

In this provocative study, Pilar Martínez Benedí and Ralph James Savarese reveal the great anticipator Herman Melville’s illumination of the hidden life of the sensory and the neural unconscious. In a work more dialogic than diagnostic, Martínez Benedí and Savarese explore Melville’s advocacy for the perceptual and his ardent overcoming of biased categories and limiting social constructs. They cast wildchild and cosmopolitan Melville as the bard of neuroatypicality.