Even in the Lawless Seas

Legal Imagination and Oceanic History in the World of Herman Melville

AvMatthew Crow

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

Del i serien Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society

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Beskrivning

Herman Melville is traditionally understood as a writer of the open seas, seeking freedom from the constraints of law, politics, and power. This book offers a transformative reading, revealing a different Melville – one who viewed the ocean as a theater of contested sovereignties and crumbling constitutions. Drawing on his experiences under sail and his reflections on whales and the life of the sea, Melville learned to read nature with distinctively political eyes; in each of these contexts and more, he told stories of people escaping from one legal order only to find another. His work illuminates entangled zones of multiple jurisdictions where discretionary powers of conscience and judgment remain vital means for finding justice, equity, and mercy in the tempestuous world in which we live.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-10-31
Vikt:500 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781009747769

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Mer om författaren

Matthew Crow is Professor of History and Law and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. He is the author of Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection (2017).

Recensioner i media

'How do we think together what Herman Melville memorably described as the world's bewildering inapprehensibility – a magisterial resistance to human-scaled acts of comprehension – and the grand supervisory edifice of law? In Even in the Lawless Seas, Matthew Crow brings us into the illuminating inner reaches of this crucial question.' Peter Coviello, author of Make Yourselves Gods and Is There God After Prince?

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction; 1. The experience of discretion: legality and the problem of power at sea in White-Jacket and Redburn; 2. Ancient constitutions and Pacific history: Oceania and the ruins of empires in Typee, Omoo, and Mardi; 3. Cetacean constitutions and Oceanic history: sovereignty resurfaces in Moby-Dick; 4. The binding of equity: jurisprudence and its ruins in Pierre, Israel Potter, the Piazza Tales, and beyond; 5. The ruins of discretion: Billy-Budd and jurisprudential wisdom.