Description: An accessible and highly readable guide to the story of Melville criticism as it has developed over the past century and a half.
Brief description: BRIAN YOTHERS is a professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Saint Louis University.
Review Quotes:
Yothers conducts [the] rather daunting task . . . of synthesizing the history of Melville criticism . . . with aplomb and successfully carries out his intention of creating a "meaningful taxonomy of the various critical mirrors used to understand Melville's work.". . . [T]his engaging and meticulously researched volume dedicated to the extensive field of Melville studies will be a useful text for scholars and reference libraries alike. THE YEAR'S WORK IN ENGLISH STUDIES
Provides a useful guide to the overwhelming quantity of Melville studies produced in the last century and helps to demonstrate the utility of literary criticism for understanding and enriching the author's oeuvre. AMERICAN LITERATURE
Of value to anyone wishing to get a purchase on critical approaches to Melville's work, the study is intriguing for its narrative form; Yothers becomes a disinterested Ishmael following scholars in their quest for Melville. The title and subtitle are appropriate because, as the author makes clear, Melville's work allows for a variety of critical perspectives and yet remains slightly beyond the critical moment. In an epilogue, Yothers highlights how Melville has moved from a figure of literary study to a cultural figure, making way for yet another future for Melville studies. CHOICE
Melville, I think, would have appreciated the scope of Brian Yothers's recent book. With rigor and grace, Melville's Mirrors examines a topic as vast and seemingly ungraspable as Ishmael's snowy phantom: the history of Melville criticism from 1920 to 2010. . . . [This book is] the most comprehensive and judicious study of Melville scholarship to date. . . . Yothers weaves together a compelling guide to the major critical texts and trends. Yet the book's foremost contribution likely inheres in the deep history that it provides for contemporary scholarship. . . . [The] evolution [of interpretation] is slow and accumulative, but it is what makes possible the splendid critical resources we have today-to which this book is an invaluable contribution. LEVIATHAN: A JOURNAL OF MELVILLE STUDIES