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Melville's inversion of Jonah in Moby-Dick
Journal article

Melville's inversion of Jonah in Moby-Dick

Jay A Holstein
The Iliff review, Vol.42(1), pp.13-20
Winter 1985

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Abstract

This paper shows how Melville, in Father Mapple's sermon in Moby-Dick, communicated what he regarded to be a wicked teaching. In Mapple's sermon, Melville sought to promote a wicked teaching wickedly by using a biblical text (the book of Jonah) to set forth what is perhaps the anti-biblical teaching par excellence; for both the sermon itself and the context in which Melville placed it posit a paganism which affirms that man is at the mercy of forces either alien or indifferent to him.
Biblical Studies Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 Bible. Jonah Bible in literature

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