“Great Flood-Gates of the Wonder World”: Baptisms of Water and Fire in Melville and Hawthorne by Ariel Clark Silver

“…The better part of Melville’s oeuvre—Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd, Sailor—is baptized in water. Like Ishmael in Moby-Dick, Melville wishes to “sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts” (Moby-Dick 8). …”
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