Melville: Fashioning in Modernity

Stephen Matterson is Professor of English Studies and a Fellow of the College at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. He is the author or editor of nine books and over sixty articles, essays and reviews on aspects of US literature. His past publications include the Penguin Classics edition of Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man (edited with an Introduction and Notes, 1990); American Literature: The Essential Glossary (2003); the Wordsworth edition of The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman (edited with an introduction and notes, 2006); and Studying Poetry (with Darryl Jones; 1st edition, 2000; updated and enlarged second edition, 2011).

• Introduction: Herman Melville’s blue-jean careerChapter One: So unspeakably significant: Melville, Hawthorne and the shawlsChapter Two: A very strange compound indeed: Carlyle, Redburn and White-JacketChapter Three: He was an European, and had Cloaths on: Typee.Chapter Four: The dress befitted the fate: Israel Potter’s LivesChapter Five: These buttons that we wear: Billy Budd

[The] dress-theme proves a fresh and remarkably fertile approach to Melville’s prose, and is the basis both for new insights into individual works and for a novel consideration of the broader development of his writing career. ... Matterson’s keen eye for detail and parallels, the scholarly rigor of his research and his entertaining writing style draw the reader into a considered and multifaceted portrayal of Melville and an elaborate exploration of the symbolic aspects of dress and clothing. The individual chapters provide stimulating starting points for a study of individual works, whereas the book as a whole offers a fresh and novel meditation on Melville as an author. As such, the book will be valuable to a range of readers, from undergraduate students looking for readings of individual works, to graduate students looking for inspiration for research topics and to anyone else who has a particular interest in Melville.