Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgment
- Abbreviations and Editions Cited
- Introduction
- Part I The American Logocracy: The Nexus of Word and Act
- Part II Political and Linguistic Corruption: The Ideological Inheritance
- 3 The Classical Pattern: From the Order of Orpheus to the Chaos of the Thucydidean Momen
- 4 The Christian Typology: From Eden to Babel to Pentecost
- 5 Eloquence, Liberty, and Power: Civic Humanism and the Counter-Renaissance
- 6 The Enlightenment Project: Language Reform and Political Order
- Part III The American Language of Revolution and Constitutional Change
- Part IV From Logomachy to Civil War: The Politics of Language in Post-Revolutionary America
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
3 - The Classical Pattern: From the Order of Orpheus to the Chaos of the Thucydidean Momen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgment
- Abbreviations and Editions Cited
- Introduction
- Part I The American Logocracy: The Nexus of Word and Act
- Part II Political and Linguistic Corruption: The Ideological Inheritance
- 3 The Classical Pattern: From the Order of Orpheus to the Chaos of the Thucydidean Momen
- 4 The Christian Typology: From Eden to Babel to Pentecost
- 5 Eloquence, Liberty, and Power: Civic Humanism and the Counter-Renaissance
- 6 The Enlightenment Project: Language Reform and Political Order
- Part III The American Language of Revolution and Constitutional Change
- Part IV From Logomachy to Civil War: The Politics of Language in Post-Revolutionary America
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
Summary
“With mankind,” he would say, “forms, measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus with his lyre spellbinding the wild denizens of the wood.”
Herman Melville, Billy Budd… read Thucydides without horror?
words lost their significance
Ezra Pound, Canto LXVII (citing John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions)In “The House-top,” a haunting poem about the draft riots in New York City in the summer of 1863, Herman Melville gives form to a moment that is the antithesis of form: the dismemberment of law. “The Atheist roar of riot,” which resounds through New York in the dog days of July, murders sleep and stifles the sound of sense. During the riots, which culminated in the massacre of blacks, inhabitants of the city shed their humanity and return to a savage nature, a state of bellum omnium contra omnes.
The Town is taken by its rats – ship-rats
And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe –
Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
(BP, 89)The rats infesting the city bite through the cords – the political and religious bonds – that have subjected them to a better sway than sway of self. The scourge of Draconian law and Calvin's creed must be wielded again.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Representative WordsPolitics, Literature, and the American Language, 1776–1865, pp. 69 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993