Editing Moby-Dick (section)

=== Thomas Carlyle ===
Critics have seen parallels between ''Moby Dick'' and [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s work, particularly ''[[Sartor Resartus]]'' (1833–34), ''[[On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History]]'' (1841) and the ''[[Critical and Miscellaneous Essays]]'', which Melville read while writing the novel.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gravett |first=Sharon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Nvdx-4-CzoC |title=The Carlyle Encyclopedia |publisher=[[Fairleigh Dickinson University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8386-3792-0 |editor-last=Cumming |editor-first=Mark |location=Madison, NJ / Teaneck, NJ |pages=316–317 |chapter=Melville, Herman |url-access=limited}}</ref> James Barbour and biographer Leon Howard write that "Carlyle's rhetoric is reflected" in much of the dialogue of Ahab and Ishmael, while Melville uses ''Sartor''{{'}}s philosophical concepts of "an emblematic universe" and a "weaver god" "almost in Carlyle's words".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Barbour |first1=James |last2=Howard |first2=Leon |date=1976 |title=Carlyle and the Conclusion of ''Moby-Dick'' |journal=The New England Quarterly |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=214–224 |issn=0028-4866 |jstor=364499 |doi=10.2307/364499}}</ref> [[Alexander Welsh]] argues that Carlyle figured "largely in the undertaking of ''Moby Dick''", noting that the "figure of the sheep in 'The Funeral' ... is taken directly from Carlyle", specifically the essay "[[Boswell's Life of Johnson]]" (1832) and that the "language of herring and whales, fleets and commodores" may have been borrowed from ''Sartor''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Welsh |first=Alexander |date=1958 |title=A Melville Debt to Carlyle |journal=Modern Language Notes |volume=73 |issue=7 |pages=489–491 |jstor=3043017 |issn=0149-6611 |doi=10.2307/3043017}}</ref> According to [[Paul Giles (academic)|Paul Giles]], ''Sartor'' "furnished Melville with a prototype for his playful iconoclastic style in ''Moby-Dick''", particularly in its narrative strategy and romantic ironic paradoxes.<ref>{{cite book |last=Giles |first=Paul |url=http://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani0000unse_z2g4 |title=The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville |date=1998 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |editor-last=Levine |editor-first=Robert S. |editor-link=Robert S. Levine |location=Cambridge |page=233 |chapter='Bewildering Intertanglement': Melville's Engagement with British Culture |url-access=registration}}</ref> The "shared use of the clothing metaphor" is also inspired by ''Sartor''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Moby-Dick: Centennial Essays |publisher=[[Southern Methodist University Press]] |year=1953 |editor1-last=Hillway |editor1-first=Tyrus |page=84 |editor2-last=Mansfield |editor2-first=Luther S.}}</ref>

[[Jonathan Arac]] sees in ''Moby-Dick'' "a direct appropriation" of Carlyle's "Hero". "Ahab", writes Arac, "is very much a Carlylean hero", which Carlyle's "romantic image of [[Cromwell]] helped Melville to create". Carlyle's portraits of [[Dante Alighieri]] and Shakespeare in "The Hero as Poet", the third lecture of ''On Heroes'', "offered models that helped Melville to develop as a reader and to achieve the definition of himself as a writer that made ''Moby-Dick'' possible".<ref>{{cite book |last=Arac |first=Jonathan |url=http://archive.org/details/commissionedspir0000arac_p6e5 |title=Commissioned Spirits: The Shaping of Social Motion in Dickens, Carlyle, Melville, and Hawthorne |date=1989 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-07116-1 |location=New York |pages=149–151 |url-access=registration}}</ref>