A Discover Magazine science writer, Carl
Zimmer, however, doesn’t. In fact he asks “How many students have missed
the fine passages of “Cetology”? He briefly looks at Melville’s science writing
in scientific and historical contexts and calls it science writing “of the
highest order, before there was science writing.” It’s
really worth reading.
Frankly, if you do look at those pesky encyclopedic and
elegiac (“I celebrate a tail”? Really?) passages, there is much at which to be
awed. Never mind why Melville
included it; could you do as well to describe everything? If he wrote an
article in a modern journal, it would still stand out through the quality of
his writing.
By the way, Zimmer also muses that “It would be quite
something if student could be co-taught Moby Dick by English professors and
biologists.” I think the team teaching of our Eng 326 class is going well, and
I like our professors’ different perspectives. A biologist-humanities professor
duo actually sounds perfect for this novel!
So this is not an idle suggestion: Maybe next semester a biologist could come in as a guest/recurring guest
lecturer? I bet he or she would love it.
Nice entry. We'll be talking a bit about these scientific passages on Monday, less as ends in themselves (though we'll do some of that too) than in posing the question of what they're doing in Melville's text.
ReplyDeleteI think it interesting how we talked about in class that in these chapters Melville usually ends up talking about something else other than his designated topic. It seemed to me like this usually happened toward the end of the chapter. You'd be bored and trying to get through it, and then "hey wait a minute you're not talking about a part of whale; you're talking about orthodoxy and tradition." I do really enjoy Ishmael's insights into life. I like your suggestion for having a biology and English professor teach about Moby Dick. Both professors could add some life to those chapters in different ways.
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