Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

168prosopopeia. Melville multiplies the letters, the recipients of the letters, as a function of hisproliferation of the traumatized. Moby-Dick’s discourse is more overtly speculative andphilosophical, as opposed to the concise economy and narrower formula of Hawthorne’s allegory.In other words, Melville takes Hawthorne’s bid and ‘ups the ante.’ In fact, Hawthorne isconcerned with what might be called the archival letter, the letter from Surveyor Pue andimplicitly from the ‘dust’ of the ancestral patriarchy. The narrator of The Scarlet Letter choosesnot to choose: he refuses to, or cannot, fix the meaning of the letter or arrest its temporal course(and curse). But The Scarlet Letter as narrative project revolves narrowly around the scarlet letteras failed symbol. Melville’s circumference is much greatera circumference he literalizes by theglobal voyage of the Pequod. Maybe this is why The Scarlet Letter is so claustrophobic, whileMoby-Dick is expansive as the prairie.I have already shown that arrival undermines any possibility of a final destination. In thissense, Ishmael is the narrator, in effect, the letter or the post, because of the presence of the debrisof Queequeg’s letter within his letter and because of his appropriation of Melville’s own letter.Ishmael, like Socrates who wrote nothing but appeared as a character in Plato’s dialogues, writesin the shadow of Melville and follows his injunctions. This complicates the question of legacy.Here, the legatee is Ishmael who hands down this legacy to the readerI am the legatee.Inheritance is a process that activates transgenerational communication. The heir is at one removefrom the inheritance and remains always indebted 55 to the other.This relationship of indebtedness and inheritance structures any work of fiction. Ishmaelis not the legatee of Melville unless he accepts his letter and sends it to the reader. Peculiarlysecluded, neither strictly included nor completely excluded, each letter reflects on its (con)textual