Home > Gothic Literature > Melville, Herman (1819 - 1891) - Newton Arvin (Essay Date March 1949)

Melville, Herman (1819 - 1891) - Newton Arvin (Essay Date March 1949)

NEWTON ARVIN (ESSAY DATE MARCH 1949)

SOURCE: Arvin, Newton. "Melville and the Gothic Novel." The New England Quarterly 22, no. 1 (March 1949): 33-48.

In the following essay, Arvin delineates the various instances in which Melville's works are evocative of Gothic fiction by such authors as Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, and E. T. A. Hoffmann.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR JAY MACPHERSON ON MELVILLE'S "THE BELL TOWER" AND FRANKENSTEIN

Melville's "The Bell-Tower," 1855, an early moral fable about man and machine handled with Gothic suggestiveness is constructed out of a set of rather clearcut literary materials and takes in a number of interests that have proved durable since. Incidentally, it is the one piece of his fiction to remain in print during the next half-century.

Written somewhat under the influence of Frankenstein, which Melville bought in London ten...

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