The Sublime Of Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick is a great novel written by Herman Melville. It tells a story that a person named Ishmael is tired of living on land, and he decides to go to sea. Then, he boards a whaling ship named Pequod with Queequeg. On the ship, he witnesses that the captain, Ahab leads the crew to take the revenge on a white whale named Moby-Dick, and at last they die in the battle with the whale, except Ishmael himself is saved by another whaling ship. It is not until the1920s that the novel gains much concern and extensive study by various scholars. It is regarded as an American epic for its grandeur. And this thesis will explore its aesthetic sublime from the perspectives of Longinus, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant.Longinus mainly discusses the aesthetic sublime concerning the writing style, and especially focuses on the important role that great soul or the morality plays for forming the sublime style. He puts forward five points that contribute to the sublime style, including the power forming great conception, the passion, the figures, the novel diction and the elevated composition.Burke explores the sublime mainly from psychological aspect. Through the comparison between the beautiful and the sublime, he discusses the state of the sublime. And he thinks the sublime is an indirect pleasure when he probes the source of the sublime in feeling. He thinks the horror and terror are the sources. And he analyzes the horror, the vastness, and the indefinite and so on.Kant inherits but also develops Burke’s theory. Unlike Burk, Kant focuses more on the reason of the sublime. He divides the sublime into the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. He defines that if something is absolutely large, it can be called mathematically sublime. The dynamical sublime is an aesthetical judgment which we consider nature as a might that has no dominance over us. But in his opinion, the sublime does not exist in nature, instead it is a concept that a reflective intellect forms in mind.The first chapter probes the grand writing style and the nobility of Melville from Longinus’s perspectives. This paper will discuss the great conceptions, vehement passion and rhetorical devices according to Longinus’s five points of the sublime. Through the analysis of the writing background and the depiction of the characters, we can sense Melville is great. In addition, we can sense its sublime writing style through the analysis of the rich rhetoric devices, mixed genres and the vehement passion.The second chapter explores the sense of the sublime from Burke’s perspectives. Rich symbolic meanings of Moby-Dick’s white color, its unparallel power and its ubiquity make people feel its horror. Ahab’s awful appearance, nameless dominance and his bigotry in revenge arouse people’s reverence and fear. The rolling sea, the gothic elements like the inn and lots of ill omens make the novel grand. Thus, these produce the sense of the sublime.The third chapter analyzes the sense of the sublime from Kant’s perspectives. Moby-Dick’s ubiquity means the absolutely large which present the mathematically sublime. Though Moby-Dick is horrible enough, Ahab has the courage to confront it. To some extent, Moby-Dick is the symbol of the obstacle in people’s development. Ahab’s revenge stands his spirit of sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. So his revenge can be seen as the dynamically sublime. In addition, in this part the exploration of the religious belief and the white whale as the totem can stir up our sense of the sublime according to Kant’s explanation to people’s react when they stand before God.Through the analysis of the sublime from the perspectives of the three scholars’, the novel can arouse the sense of sublime no matter from its writing style, from the description of the character and scene or from its profound meaning. The paper can provide a certain aesthetic value through the exploration of the sublime in Moby-Dick.