Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

243in truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the watered world,surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrastbetween this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of thelargest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not more than one thirdof the bulk of an average-sized male. (Moby-Dick 375)Apart from the degradation and exoticization of Fedallah and his crew, Melville seems todeliberately equate Islam with paganism. Ishmael “labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents,Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad forthe health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of hygiene and commonsense” (98). Fedallah, as Melville tells us is a sun worshiper and the “devil in disguise” (315). Hisvery name suggests that he cannot be but a Muslim. It is a very popular Arabic and Muslim name.It, indeed, includes the name of Allah, and the word Feda, which means sacrifice or martyrdom.The derivation of the name is very suggestive of a great number of most common Muslim namessuch as “Abdallah” (slave of Allah), “Saifallah” (sword of Allah). “Fedallah” is a “gambogesghost” whose presence disturbs the other harpooners. Melville, one must remember, seems veryfamiliar with Islam and the Arab world because of his perpetual references to Islam and Muslimsin Moby-Dick and his actual pilgrimage to the Middle East. However, this familiarity isdetermined by the rhetoric of empire. Melville’s world is shaped by the ideologies of imperialismand colonialism. He posits that “the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperialbrain” (Moby-Dick 151). What we have is a series of fundamentalisms: Occidentalism,Orientalism, Secularism, Capitalism, and so on.