Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, Herman Melville - Steven C. Scheer (essay date 1990)


Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, Herman Melville - Steven C. Scheer (essay date 1990)

Steven C. Scheer (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: “Herman Melville: The Subversive Lie of Expedient Truth in Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities,” in Pious Impostures and Unproven Words: The Romance of Deconstruction in Nineteenth-Century America, University Press of America, 1990, pp. 67-94.

[In the following excerpt, Scheer examines the relationship between Pierre and the narrator of Pierre and explores the nature of self-knowledge and virtue.]

1. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL GROUND: OR, THE EXPEDIENT LIE

“… a most singular act of pious imposture”

Because it traces the causes and effects of the inscription of this chapter, Melville's Pierre (1852) is perhaps the most openly deconstructive work under consideration in this book. Its “thematics” of reading and writing anticipate a number of Freudian, Nietzschean, and Derridean insights: the sublimation of repressed sexuality, the...

[The entire page is 11505 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass