Melville and Repose The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance [Hardcover]

John Bryant's book is a strong and significant argument for the centrality of the comic and repose in Melville's novels. The purpose ofMelville and Reposeis dual: to ground the uses of romantic humor in Melville in sensitive readings of contemporaneous European and American writings, and to offer a definitive account of the comic as the shaping force of Melville's narrative voice throughout the major phase of his literary career. Bryant argues that Melville fused a rhetoric of geniality and picturesque sensibility adopted from the British with a rhetoric of deceit borrowed from the American tall tale in order to create his own amiably cosmopolitan rhetoric of aesthetic repose. Thorough research into American culture and recent Melville manuscript findings, an engaging style, and full, scholarly readings combine to make this historicist study a welcome addition to the libraries of Americanists and Melville scholars and enthusiasts.

Bryant offers unique and ground-breaking readings of Melville's work....Thorough research into American culture and recent Melville manuscript findings, an engaging style, and full, scholarly readings combine to make this historicist study a welcome addition to the libraries of Americanists and Melville scholars and enthusiasts. --American Renaissance Literary Report

Written in a lively and engaging style but incorporating an impressive degree of scholarly research, not only into the corpus of Melville scholarship but also the history and culture of the Renaissance,Melville and Reposeis a major contribution to thought about the nature of America's first literary flowering. --American Studies

Thoughtful inquirers into pre-Civil War American humor will need to read this book, which also bears on the 1840-1890 period not mentioned. --To Wit

This is overall a rich and engaging analysis. --American Literature

...the book informs, prló£