Meeting One: Why Study Literature and Film?

This introductory lecture addresses problems related to the  transformations of Western culture and literary sensitivity throughout the ages.  Questions raised include:

Meeting Two: Melville and Calvinism

The second introductory lecture is dedicated to an issue of central  importance to Melville's oeuvre. In class, we will refresh our memories and address the possible senses of the famous sentence Hawthorne wrote about Melville: "Melville [...] can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief, and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.[...]" Questions we will try to address include:

Meeting Three: The Library

This time, we will take a closer look at Ishmael and examining this character we will try to answer the following questions:

• What qualities of language do we observe while interpreting the following poem by e.e. cummings?

• How does it relate to Hackluyt's statement in "Etymology"?
  
• How do we know who the central character of Moby-Dick is?
• Why would some of the early translators of Melville's Moby-Dick "skip over the inconvenience" of "Etymology" and "Extracts"?
• How do "Etymology" and "Extracts" relate to the "Epilogue"
  

Homework:

Meeting Four: The Ungraspable Phantom, or, on Escaping Sense

Back to  our classroom and  back to  debate: we will make an attempt at defining possible approaches to the "escape of sense." Among others, we will focus upon the following issues:

Homework:

Try to build a portrait of Pip on the basis of relevant passages of Moby-Dick. Also, see the pictorial representations of Pip available in the Internet as well as in publications dedicated to visual interpretations of Herman Melville's oeuvre, such as Elizabeth Schulz's Unpainted to the Last

Also, please peruse the library and the internet resources in search for such concepts as:

• Fear and trembling/Sickness unto death (Kierkegaard)
  
• Sorge/Dasein/In Der Welt Dasein (Heidegger)
  
• Nausea/Neantization (Sartre)
  

Meeting Five: Ishmael and Ahab - In Search of Certainty

This time we will concentrate upon the two principal characters of Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Ahab, whom Melville exposes to a (meta)physical trauma. Issues raised in the discussion ought to concern:

• Why does Ahab seek to find the white Whale? What may the white whale signify?
• Why would Ishmael smile compassionately at the attempts of the sub-sub librarian of the Extracts?
• Why are some pictorial representations of whales monstrous and others only less monstrous?
• Why does Ahab throw away his pipe? Why does he mistrust the map? Why does he destroy his quadrant? What does he suggest to Starbuck when he says that all visible objects are "pasteboard masks"?
• Wherein are Ishmael and Ahab similar? Where do they differ? What would be the difference in our reading of Moby-Dick if we assumed that a) Moby-Dick is a story of Ahab; b) Moby-Dick is a narrative of/on Ishmael

Meeting Six: The Cases of Pip, Stubb and White Jacket. Existence and Beyond. A moderated debate.

This debate, after a short introduction by me, will be conducted by six moderators, elected from among the group. It will address the elementary question of self in the context of existential human condition. Issues raised in the discussion ought to concern:

• The definition of self
  
• The relationship between self and the other
• The relationship between self and object
  
• The concept of "thirdness"
• The relationship between transcendence and language
• Existentialist concepts of self
• Object/Self/Other
  

Meeting Seven: "Healed of my hurt, I laud th'inhuman sea...." Towards  the  deification of the Ocean or, on Making Sense - and Making Sense Make Sense

• Rethink the discussions we have had so far and try to formulate your own concept of what Melville's existentialism is like. Please, describe its main tenets as you perceive them in one or two paragraphs you will bring to class next time.
• Read the "Prologue" to the Invisible Man  by Ralph Ellison
• Read Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
• Watch the movie "Amistad"
  
• Search Moby Dick for passages respecting Quequeeg, Tashtego, Dagoo, Pip and Fleece. Think of how race is represented in Melville and what rhetoric is used in these passages.
  

Meeting Eight: The Shadow of a Negro. Melville, Ophtalmology and the Human Condition.

In this class we will study in detail issues related to race in the context of the broader debate concerning human condition. We will attempt at discussing the rhetoric used by Melville in his descriptions of characters of Dagoo, Tashtego, Queequeg, Pip and Fleece in the context of his later short story, "Benito Cereno" and in contrast to the concept of "cultural blindness" as proposed by Ellison.

Meeting Nine: Melville's Existentialism: In Search of Self, or Beyond the Point of No return

This meeting will be based on a moderated debate on Moby-Dick,  White-Jacket and "Benito Cereno" in the context the writer's search for transcendence and your own discoveries made in the course of your research.

Individual  Conferences, Credits

ATTENTION: Paper Submission Deadline Jan 25th