What is Melville beyond the whale? Long celebrated for his stories
of the sea, Melville was also fascinated by the interrelations
between living species and planetary systems, a perspective
informing his work in ways we now term "ecological". By reading
Melville in the context of nineteenth-century science, Tom Nurmi
contends that he may best be understood as a proto-ecologist who
innovatively engages with the entanglement of human and nonhuman
realms. Melville lived during a period in which the process of
scientific specialization was well underway, while the integration
of science and art was concurrently being addressed by American
writers. Steeped in the work of Lyell, Darwin, and other scientific
pioneers, he composed stories and verse that made the complexity of
geological, botanical, and zoological networks visible to a broad
spectrum of readers, ironically in the most "unscientific" forms of
fiction and poetry. Set against the backdrop of Melville's
literary, philosophical, and scientific influences, Magnificent
Decay focuses on four of his most neglected works - Mardi (1849),
Pierre (1852), The Piazza Tales (1856), and John Marr (1888) - to
demonstrate that, together, literature and science offer collective
insights into the past, present, and future turbulence of the
Anthropocene. Tracing the convergences of ecological and literary
creativity, Melville's lesser-read texts explore the complex
interplay between inanimate matter, life, and human society across
multiple scales and, in so doing, illustrate the value of literary
art for representing ecological relationships.
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