"Schooled by the Inhuman Sea": Maritime Imagination and the Discourses of Emancipation in Herman Melville's "Clarel"

The aim of the essay is to read Clarel as Melville’s most mature reflection on issues related to democracy and emancipation in the United States. Most importantly, I argue that Melville significantly structured Clarel as a sailor’s narrative, originally adapting the popular devices of sea-writing to versification in order to bridge the gap between his early fiction and his later poetry. Finally, considering Melville’s lifelong engagement with autobiographical narratives and maritime references, I propose to read Clarel as the author’s poetic pilgrimage to offset the excessive autobiographical impulse of his early fiction, in order to gain an artistic, as well as a personal, emancipation.