“One of the strange things about literary criticism has been the infrequency with which it has concerned itself about science and its relations to literature” (Beaver,Walt Whitman -Poet of Science,vii). As if responding to Beaver’s remark of 1951, A.J. Meadows publishedThe High Firmamenteighteen years later. Noting that “unless a special analysis is made many literary references to science become incomprehensible to a modern reader,” Meadows then sets up his parameters, stating that he will concentrate on the particular science of astronomy and that his “discussion is restricted to literature produced in the British Isles - American...

Elsewhere I have demonstrated that astronomical references show up in the works of many major nineteenth-century American writers: Edgar Allan Foe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Henry James, for instance.¹ Of these, Poe, Emerson, Whitman, and Mark Twain, particularly, display an impressive enthusiasm for and knowledge of the science, as discussed by several scholars (Kremenliev and Conner on Poe; Paul, Lindner, and Clark on Emerson; Joseph Beaver, Cooke, Dugdale, Tanner, and Scholnick on Whitman; Waggoner, Paine, and Cummings on Mark Twain). But besides the essays of John Gretchko, very little...

InMardiMelville uses his knowledge of astronomy both for symbolic and allegorical purposes.¹ Here I examine the cosmic allegory ofMardi: Tajiand his entourage are space-travelers voyaging within the Milky Way galaxy through a plurality of worlds. For the most part, Melville uses this literary device to explore the idea of cultural relativism and to satirize humanity’s sense of self-importance. The Mardian universe is filled not only with myriads of extraterrestrial physical existences but also with myriads of essences – for the old Neoplatonic Great Chain of Being forms part of the cosmologicalmetaphysical vision of the book. Taji’s fanatical...

As far as I can tell very little has been written about the stellar imagery inClarel. InHerman Melville’sClarel: ASpiritual Autobiography, Vincent Kenny makes a few observations but considers the stellar imagery within the context of a larger pattern - light imagery. Joseph Knapp, inTortured Synthesis: The Meaning of Melville’sClarel, has a few remarks, the best of which is, “a transcendent in the heaven above the earth, is suggested in the brilliant star images” (31). It is odd that so little critical attention has been brought to bear on this pattern of images, however, for,...

That Melville occasionally associates characters in his works with astronomical objects such as the sun, moon, comets, meteors, stars, and constellations is maintained by several scholars, including Moore, Mills, Leonard, Gretchko, Franklin, Finkelstein, and Dillingham. Certainly every reader ofBilly Buddrecognizes the astronomical imagery in that book — what little of it there is — but scholars do not seem to know what to make of it. As far as I know only Reinhard Friederich has written a full-length article on the astronomy; in “Billy Buddin a Symbolist Context” he notes the “number of different star references which accompany all...

In chapter 1 we saw how extensive Melville’s knowledge of astronomy was, and in the following chapters 1 showed how he exploited that science for literary purposes (thematically, symbolically, and allegorically). Some final observations and some speculations about Melville’s attitude toward astronomy remain to be made.

In his dissertation and in some articles published after he completed it, Tyrus Hillway discusses what Melville’s attitude toward science in general might have been. By the time he wroteMoby-Dick,says Hillway, Melville had dissociated himself from the earlier writer of the romantic novelsTypeeandOmooand “allied himself with the scientists who...