Moby-Dick et la question du livre

Moby-Dick and the Question of the Book In Moby-Dick, Melville pursued the old Western dream, revived in the 19th century by German Romanticism, of the liber mundi, the unique and absolute Book that would encompass the totality of knowledge. The world's text, however, can no longer be authenticated by God's signature, as it was in the Middle Ages. Its totality has broken into fragments ; the new Bible is nothing more than « the draught of a draught. » Moby-Dick invites both a sym-bolic reading, according to the totalizing spirit of analogy, and a more modern dia-bolic reading, acknowledging the disorder and uncompletedness of a fragmented world.Bleikasten André. Moby-Dick et la question du livre. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°50, novembre 1991. Herman Melville. pp. 377-390