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Why Captain Ahab is worthy of our fear—and our compassion

Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab is perennially seen as the paradigm of a controlling, tyrannical agent. Ahab Unbound leaves his position as a Cold War icon behind, recasting him as a contingent figure, transformed by his environment—by chemistry, electromagnetism, entomology, meteorology, diet, illness, pain, trauma, and neurons firing—in ways that unexpectedly force us to see him as worthy of our empathy and our compassion. 

In sixteen essays by leading scholars, Ahab Unbound advances an urgent inquiry into Melville’s emergence as a center of gravity for materialist work, reframing his infamous whaling captain in terms of pressing conversations in animal studies, critical race and ethnic studies, disability studies, environmental humanities, medical humanities, political theory, and posthumanism. By taking Ahab as a focal point, we gather and give shape to the multitude of ways that materialism produces criticism in our current moment. Collectively, these readings challenge our thinking about the boundaries of both persons and nations, along with the racist and environmental violence caused by categories like the person and the human.

Ahab Unbound makes a compelling case for both the vitality of materialist inquiry and the continued resonance of Melville’s work.

Contributors: Branka Arsić, Columbia U; Christopher Castiglia, Pennsylvania State U; Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt U; Christian P. Haines, Pennsylvania State U; Bonnie Honig, Brown U; Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt U; Pilar Martínez Benedí, U of L’Aquila, Italy; Steve Mentz, St. John’s College; John Modern, Franklin and Marshall College; Mark D. Noble, Georgia State U; Samuel Otter, U of California, Berkeley; Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College; Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College; Russell Sbriglia, Seton Hall U; Michael D. Snediker, U of Houston; Matthew A. Taylor, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ivy Wilson, Northwestern U.

What is the difference between public and private feeling, and how far can we deduce past feelings from the words that have been left us? Why do child deaths figure so often and so prominently in the literature of the nineteenth century, and how was the theme of the death of a child used to elicit such poignant responses in the readers of that era? In this fascinating new book, Laurence Lerner vividly contrasts the contempt with which twentieth- century criticism so often dismisses such works as mere sentimentality with the enthusiasm and tears of nineteenth-century contemporaries.

Drawing examples from both real and literary deaths, Lerner delves into the writings of well-known authors such as Dickens, Coleridge, Shelley, Flaubert, Mann, Huxley, and Hesse, as well as lesser known writers like Felicia Hemans and Lydia Sigourney. In the process, he synthesizes fresh ideas about the thorny subjects of sentimentality, aesthetic judgment, and the function of religion in literature.

Lerner's forthright and evocative prose style is enjoyable reading, and he excels in teasing out the moral implications and the psychosocial entanglements of his chosen narrative and lyrical texts. This is a book that will illuminate an important aspect of the history of private life. It should have wide application for those interested in the history, sociology, and literature of the nineteenth century.