Did God Write Moby Dick? A Newberry Library Scholarly Seminar with Professor Peter Coviello
September 28, 2022
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Newberry Library- Rettinger Hall
Address
60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610
Calendar
Download iCal FileDid God Write Moby-Dick? Peter Coviello, University of Illinois Chicago
This essay takes up two conceptual formations of great consequence to Herman Melville: “religion” and “literature.” Part of what binds them so tightly for Melville, I argue, is a set of transformative upheavals in liberal culture we now call by another name: “secularism.” In the fury and articulate despair of his novel – which mourns the sequestering of the public enterprise of theology within a zone of personal piety, “influence” – Melville maps out in cartographic detail the solidification of what would become “literature” as such as a by-product of secular discipline.
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Date posted
Sep 9, 2022
Date updated
Sep 9, 2022