- Typee: A Peep At Polynesian LifeLink visible for attendees
Almost from the time of its publication, Melville's first book, Typee (1846), has been recognized as a classic of travel and adventure literature. It was immensely popular in Melville's lifetime, and often regarded as his best work. It established his reputation as the literary discoverer of the South Seas, and continued to inspire the likes of Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Frederick O'Brien.
Loosely based on Melville's first-hand experience as a guest-captive of the (allegedly cannibalistic) natives of the Marquesas Islands, it is a fast-moving and humorous adventure tale, describing the Typee culture, customs, and beliefs with a mixture of admiration, curiosity, and criticism. The narrator also describes his escape attempts, his friendship with his companion Toby and servant Kory-Kory, and his island romance with the beautiful Fayaway.
The book is both an anthropological study and a philosophical reflection on the contrast between civilization and savagery, an examination of the nature of good and evil, and a frank exploration of sensuality and exotic ritual.
The subtitle--"A Peep at Polynesian Life"--obliquely suggests an island "peep show," wherein the narrator (who only calls himself "Tom") is a kind of "Peeping Tom": the legendary character who refused to avert his eyes during Lady Godiva's famous ride through town. In that vein, Tom encounters "noble" and "nubile" savages alike.
Initially rejected by critics as too fantastic to be true, scholars continue to discuss the book's veracity in terms of its imaginative embellishments and unacknowledged use of secondary sources.
Week 1: 6/9: chapters 1-11
Week 2: 6/16: chapters 12-24
Week 3: 6/23: chapters 25-34, The Story of TobyNote: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Typee:
Supplemental:
- Fayaway song by Tankus the Henge
- French Polynesia and Melville
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Typee: A Peep At Polynesian LifeLink visible for attendees
Almost from the time of its publication, Melville's first book, Typee (1846), has been recognized as a classic of travel and adventure literature. It was immensely popular in Melville's lifetime, and often regarded as his best work. It established his reputation as the literary discoverer of the South Seas, and continued to inspire the likes of Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Frederick O'Brien.
Loosely based on Melville's first-hand experience as a guest-captive of the (allegedly cannibalistic) natives of the Marquesas Islands, it is a fast-moving and humorous adventure tale, describing the Typee culture, customs, and beliefs with a mixture of admiration, curiosity, and criticism. The narrator also describes his escape attempts, his friendship with his companion Toby and servant Kory-Kory, and his island romance with the beautiful Fayaway.
The book is both an anthropological study and a philosophical reflection on the contrast between civilization and savagery, an examination of the nature of good and evil, and a frank exploration of sensuality and exotic ritual.
The subtitle--"A Peep at Polynesian Life"--obliquely suggests an island "peep show," wherein the narrator (who only calls himself "Tom") is a kind of "Peeping Tom": the legendary character who refused to avert his eyes during Lady Godiva's famous ride through town. In that vein, Tom encounters "noble" and "nubile" savages alike.
Initially rejected by critics as too fantastic to be true, scholars continue to discuss the book's veracity in terms of its imaginative embellishments and unacknowledged use of secondary sources.
Week 1: 6/9: chapters 1-11
Week 2: 6/16: chapters 12-24
Week 3: 6/23: chapters 25-34, The Story of TobyNote: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Typee:
Supplemental:
- Fayaway song by Tankus the Henge
- French Polynesia and Melville
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South SeasLink visible for attendees
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) is Melville's sequel to Typee. The title is taken from a Polynesian term for "a rover, or rather, a person wandering from one island to another," fitting Melville's intention to portray the "'man about town' sort of life, led, at the present day, by roving sailors in the Pacific."
Beginning where the first book left off, the narrator flies from Nuku Hiva, then flies from his ship to another island, before flying back again--all the while supplemented with Melville's flights of fancy.
The distinction between fact and fiction is obscured by Melville's ironic sense of humor, and (as with Typee) contemporary reviewers were skeptical. Even the dedication to Melville's uncle--ironically, "a man who rarely left his home"--was not spared. Said one review: "Of the existence of Uncle Gansevoort... we are wholly incredulous."
Melville responded with redoubled irony in his third book, writing: "Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience."
Schedule:
- Week 1: 6/30: chapters 1-27
- Week 2: 7/7: chapters 28-55
- Week 3: 7/14: chapters 56-82
Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Omoo:
Trivia:
- Sophia (wife of Nathaniel) Hawthorne nicknamed Melville "Mr. Omoo."
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South SeasLink visible for attendees
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) is Melville's sequel to Typee. The title is taken from a Polynesian term for "a rover, or rather, a person wandering from one island to another," fitting Melville's intention to portray the "'man about town' sort of life, led, at the present day, by roving sailors in the Pacific."
Beginning where the first book left off, the narrator flies from Nuku Hiva, then flies from his ship to another island, before flying back again--all the while supplemented with Melville's flights of fancy.
The distinction between fact and fiction is obscured by Melville's ironic sense of humor, and (as with Typee) contemporary reviewers were skeptical. Even the dedication to Melville's uncle--ironically, "a man who rarely left his home"--was not spared. Said one review: "Of the existence of Uncle Gansevoort... we are wholly incredulous."
Melville responded with redoubled irony in his third book, writing: "Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience."
Schedule:
- Week 1: 6/30: chapters 1-27
- Week 2: 7/7: chapters 28-55
- Week 3: 7/14: chapters 56-82
Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Omoo:
Trivia:
- Sophia (wife of Nathaniel) Hawthorne nicknamed Melville "Mr. Omoo."
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South SeasLink visible for attendees
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) is Melville's sequel to Typee. The title is taken from a Polynesian term for "a rover, or rather, a person wandering from one island to another," fitting Melville's intention to portray the "'man about town' sort of life, led, at the present day, by roving sailors in the Pacific."
Beginning where the first book left off, the narrator flies from Nuku Hiva, then flies from his ship to another island, before flying back again--all the while supplemented with Melville's flights of fancy.
The distinction between fact and fiction is obscured by Melville's ironic sense of humor, and (as with Typee) contemporary reviewers were skeptical. Even the dedication to Melville's uncle--ironically, "a man who rarely left his home"--was not spared. Said one review: "Of the existence of Uncle Gansevoort... we are wholly incredulous."
Melville responded with redoubled irony in his third book, writing: "Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience."
Schedule:
- Week 1: 6/30: chapters 1-27
- Week 2: 7/7: chapters 28-55
- Week 3: 7/14: chapters 56-82
Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.
Omoo:
Trivia:
- Sophia (wife of Nathaniel) Hawthorne nicknamed Melville "Mr. Omoo."
This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.
- [Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants (introduction)Needs location
NOTE: This page is intended as a thematic overview of the meetups in the series, but is not itself a meetup. To RSVP, please see the individual events as they are announced on the Wisdom and Woe calendar.
Clothing is protective of health and hygiene, but it is also ornamental, communicates wealth, status, political ideals, emotional states, group membership, and personal identity. It can be expressive or repressive of one's inner life (via disguise, compulsory uniforms, sumptuary laws, etc.). It functions symbolically not only to distinguish one's relationship with society, but as synecdoche for society itself.
In the 19th century, dandyism promoted extravagant costume and opulent lifestyles closely associated with aristocracy. Dandies provided a surprisingly consistent foil for Melville's satire, while scantily-clad Polynesians dramatized his philosophy of austere egalitarianism, ala Thoreau, Tolstoy, and others.
The sacred and profane aspects of ceremonial clothing were treated by Melville in "The Whiteness of the Whale" and "The Cassock" chapters of Moby-Dick, respectively. And even the Pale Usher is "threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain." For Edward Carpenter, clothing's spiritual significance was in its ability to stifle both body and soul: "one might almost as well be in one's coffin as in the stiff layers of buckram-like clothing commonly worn nowadays.... Eleven layers between him and God! .... Who could be inspired under all this weight of tailordom?"
Political revolutions and counter-revolutions can manifest sartorially, as in White-Jacket's fictionalized "Rebellion of the Beards." The psychologist J.C. Flügel protested the so-called "Great Male Renunciation" that stigmatized colorful menswear. He declared that "Our motto should be 'Better and Brighter Clothes,'" while (ironically) also prophesying that a more enlightened age would embrace a "nude future." His views were shared by the "Men's Dress Reform Party" and "Sunlight League"--the latter of which euphemistically promoted nudity as a form of alternative medicine deemed "helio-therapy." Despite their discontent, no protestors were known to publicly set fire to their unmentionables.
Series schedule:
Extracts:
- "...if yonder Emperor and I were to strip and jump overboard for a bath, it would be hard telling which was of the blood royal when we should once be in the water." (White-Jacket, 56)
- "But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King." (Billy Budd, Sailor, 21)
- "By this code, the minutest things in life were all ordered after a specific fashion. More especially one's dress was legislated upon, to the last warp and woof. All girdles must be so many inches in length, and with such a number of tassels in front. For a violation of this ordinance, before the face of all Mardi, the most dutiful of sons would cut the most affectionate of fathers." (Mardi, 2.23)
- "People may say what they will about the taste evinced by our fashionable ladies in dress. Their jewels, their feathers, their silks, and their furbelows, would have sunk into utter insignificance beside the exquisite simplicity of attire adopted by the nymphs of the vale on this festive occasion. I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation, contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de' Medici placed beside a milliner's doll." (Typee, 22)
- "“All is vanity.” All." (Moby-Dick, 96)
For further exploration:
- Melville: Fashioning in Modernity by Stephen Matterson
Not open - [Series] Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants (schedule)Needs location
NOTE: This page is intended as a thematic overview of the meetups in the series, but is not itself a meetup. To RSVP, please see the individual events as they are announced on the Wisdom and Woe calendar. This page will be updated as necessary to reflect changes to the schedule.
For a descriptive overview of this series, see here:
Series schedule:
- A Discourse Upon the Origin of Inequality - Rousseau - 5/19
- The Theory of the Leisure Class - Veblen - 5/26
- Of Dandyism and of George Brummell - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly - 6/2
- Typee: A Peep At Polynesian Life - 6/9, 6/16, 6/23
- Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas - 6/30, 7/7, 7/14
- Totem and Taboo - Freud - 7/21
- Letters to His Son - Lord Chesterfield - 7/28
- Don Juan - Lord Byron - 8/4
- D'Orsay; or, The Complete Dandy - W. Teignmouth Shore - 8/11
- Henrietta Temple - Benjamin Disraeli - 8/18
- Pierre; or, The Ambiguities - 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15
- A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift - x1
- Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle - x3
- The Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope [Sat] - x1
- Dandy Doodles - x1
- The Book of Job - x1
- Cinderella - Brothers Grimm [Sat] - x1
- The Women of Trachis - Sophocles - x1
- The Sea Lady - H.G. Wells - x1
- Mary Slessor [The White Queen of the Cannibals] - W.P. Livingston - x1
- John Rutherford, The White Chief - George Lillie Craik - x1
- White Shadows in the South Seas - Frederick O'Brien - x2
- White Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War - x4
- Movie night: "White Shadows in the South Seas" & "Fig Leaves"
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - x2
- Movie night: "Last of the Pagans" & "Omoo-Omoo, The Shark God"
- Culture and Anarchy - Matthew Arnold - x2
- The Rebel - Camus - x1
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey ~288pp (buy here)
- Murat - Alexander Dumas [Sat] - x1
- Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) - x1
- On Revolution - Hannah Arendt - x1
- The Leopard - Lampedusa - x2
- The Overcoat - Gogol [Sat] - x1
- The Burgundy Club Sketches - x1
- Pacifism and Rebellion in the Writings of Herman Melville - John Bernstein
Not open