Gothic Melville

In a famous review of Nathaniel Hawthornes Mosses from an Old Manse, Herman Melville took the critics to task for missing the darkness as the heart of Hawthornes writing a blackness ten times black, as Melville put it, that fascinated him. Ironically, Melville has been subject to the same treatment by critics who have in large measure steered clear of Melvilles own darkness. The contributors to Gothic Melville reveal that, if Hawthornes darkness is ten times black, then Melvilles is a hundred times so, as his works repeatedly raise questions about what the truth is or if truth exists at all. This edited collection of scholarly essays makes up for the critical neglect of Melvilles Gothicism by arguing that the Gothic is so extensively interwoven into the fabric of his writing that Melville must at last be recognised as among the genres most important practitioners.