BASC50024 - Moby Dick

Course Description

We continue our close reading of Moby Dick in Spring quarter. Moby Dick is our American epic—not only the white whale but the book itself are among the most over-determined and pervasive symbols of our culture, both higher and popular. It “contains the cosmos,” says Harold Bloom, adding, somewhat more controversially, that he “would not change one sentence...”

This is the third quarter of a three-quarter sequence. The sequence consists of a close reading in autumn and winter, followed in spring by consideration of major critical works, some of which, at least, are great in their own right (e.g., Charles Olsen, Alfred Kazin, Edward Edinger, and others.)

The point is to arrive at the conviction that, for once, we have actually given a classic work the kind of reading it deserves—or nearly so.