The Melville Effect: Meditations on Contemporary Art and Culture

FAIN: FEL-281779-22

Joseph Allen Boone
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)

Research and writing leading to a book on how contemporary artists engage Herman Melville’s literary aesthetics in various media.examining how contemporary artists engage Herman Melville’s (1819-1891) literary aesthetics in various media.

Our twenty-first century is in the midst of a robust Herman Melville revival, one that illuminates the shifting horizons of art in an age of multiplying media. Traces of Melville are everywhere these days: in fiction, opera, performance pieces, mixed media, visual art, online mash-ups, rap videos, even emoji translations. THE MELVILLE EFFECT is the first work to explore this phenomenon by evaluating the uses that many of today's cutting-edge artists are making of Melville's hybrid aesthetics and authorial daring. Examining the effects of such Melville-influenced artistic endeavors sheds light on the status of the arts and humanities in a world in which creative energies are increasingly being reshaped by modes of multimedia, intermedia, and digital technology, as well as evolving conceptions of audience and authorship. The interplay between this iconic figure, his many legacies, and contemporary art also opens the way to a revitalized sense of literary history.