E-Books →Melville's Maritime Politics Enlightenment at Sea

The book argues that Melville's vision of politics was shaped by the early Republican-Federalist debate, which sought to construe the meaning of the American Revolution in light of the French Revolution. Melville's works are frequently hostile towards the idea of a 'natural republic' (a polity based on 'virtue' and 'natural right' rather than 'sovereignty' or 'the rule of law'). This is nowhere more evident than in Moby-Dick, which dramatizes the shipwreck of the American Republic, a catastrophe wrought by Ahab's quest to slay the Leviathan (i.e. the State). Across six chapters, Mence presents Melville's political vision as one of "perpetual upkeep at sea": the ship of state must be sailed and repaired on the open ocean even as, to borrow from Moby-Dick, the "wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore."