CRITICISM

Andersen, Marilyn. “Melville's Jackets: Redburn and White-Jacket.” Arizona Quarterly 26 (summer 1970): 173-81.

Explores Melville's symbolic use of jackets to label their owners—Redburn and White-Jacket—as outsiders and to serve as markers of each character's psychological development.

Bromell, Nicholas K. “Melville's World of Work in Redburn.” Melville Society Extracts 66 (May 1986): 7.

Discusses Melville's approach to work as seaman and writer in Redburn.

Gallagher, Susan Vanzanten. “Jack Blunt and His Dream Book.” American Literature 58, no. 4 (December 1986): 614-19.

Explores Melville's fascination with predicting the future through astrology and the interpretation of dreams as evidenced by the character Jack Blunt in Redburn.

Greene, Sally. “Who But ‘Some Howard’: Redburn's Search for Charity.” Melville Society Extracts 93 (June 1993): 5-8.

Examines Wellingborough Redburn's disillusionment in the face of the poverty, cruelty, and depravity he encounters on his journey and his references to English philanthropist and prison reformer John Howard.

Heflin, Wilson. “Redburn and White-Jacket.” In A Companion to Melville Studies, edited by John Bryant, pp. 145-67. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Dismisses Melville's disparaging remarks about the two novels he wrote rather hastily in 1848, suggesting that the proficiency gained in their composition paved the way for the author to produce Moby-Dick two years later.

Justus, James H. “Redburn and White-Jacket: Society and Sexuality in the Narrators of 1849.” In Herman Melville: Reassessments, edited by A. Robert Lee, pp. 41-67. London: Vision Press, 1984.

Explores Melville's use of first-person retrospective narrators in the two books, the social relationships they encounter aboard their respective ships, and their repressed attraction to homosexuality.

Lackey, Kris. “The Holy Guide-Book and the Sword of the Lord: How Melville Used the Bible in Redburn and White-Jacket.” Studies in the Novel 17, no. 3 (fall 1985): 241-54.

Compares the different ways Melville employed biblical allusions in his fourth and fifth novels.

Markels, Julian. “Negotiating an Audience for American Exceptionalism: Redburn and Roughing It.” In Reciprocal Influences: Literary Production, Distribution, and Consumption in America, edited by Steven Fink and Susan S. Williams, pp. 139-50. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.

Analyzes the relationship between author and imagined reader in Melville's Redburn and Twain's Roughing It.

Sattelmeyer, Robert. “The Origin of Harry Bolton in Redburn.” American Transcendental Quarterly 31 (summer 1976): 23-25.

Suggests that J. Ross Browne, whose Etchings of a Whaling Cruise Melville reviewed in 1847, was the source for the Harry Bolton character in Redburn.

Thomas, Heather Kirk. “Melville's Redburn.” Explicator 50, no. 1 (fall 1991): 16-18.

Discusses the possible source for Wellingborough Redburn's digression on the customhouse officer in chapter 29 of Redburn.

Additional coverage of Melville's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: American Writers; Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 25; Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography 1640-1865; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 3, 74, 250; DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors: British Edition; DISCovering Authors: Canadian Edition; DISCovering Authors Modules: Most-studied Authors and Novelists; DISCovering Authors 3.0; Exploring Novels; Literature and Its Times, Vols. 1, 2; Novels for Students, Vols. 7, 9; Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Vol. 2; Short Stories for Students, Vol. 3; Short Story Criticism, Vols. 1, 17, 46; Something About the Author, Vol. 59; World Literature Criticism, 1500 to the Present.