Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

210the mother and the other keeps looking for her (i.e., the reality principle versus the incurablemelancholic). The idea I want to raise here is that the story of Ahab is a duplicate of the story ofOedipus. Newton Arvin argues that Moby-Dick stems from Melville's undue love for his mother.He goes on to purport that the relationship between Ahab/Melville and Moby Dick/father figureis a symbolic extension of Melville's Oedipal attraction to his mother; Moby Dick's claiming ofAhab's leg can be seen as a symbolic castration of Melville by his father in order to deny Melvillehis mother (248). In other words, Ahab’s prosthesis is also a symptom of his linguistic failurebecause, as Kristeva would say, he cannot recover the mother in language.Rewriting the story of Oedipus, Ishmael signs an agreement with the whale. He does notuncover its mystery. In this sense, we have various letters in the narrative. Haunting the religioustexts, the whale haunts Ishmael’s narrativea narrative that places the origin of the whale in thereligious text. Ishmael says: “the unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted thoseuncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen” (180). The origin that isendlessly deferred and hidden refers to a writing that can only unfold in the field of différance.The various references to the White Whale revolve around a major signa sign that escapesrepresentation and unfolds in the field of the void. This void is supplemented by death, which isto say, the pointing to death by the whale, by the encounter, and by the rumors of otherencounters. The circularity that structures the narrative is evoked by the various rumors referredto in the text. The water becomes the field of rumors par excellence “as the sea surpasses the landin this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime, in the wonderfulnessand fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there” (181). These rumors take theform of invented whales and stories that compose the narrative. Cetology, however, is a system of