Sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway: Regional stereotypes in the literary imagination of Herman Melville, 1846-1857.

Abstract

A significant and previously unconsidered part of Herman Melville's strategy of artistic composition concerns his use of American place-names both to suggest a sense of place and to create or perpetuate certain regional stereotypes. Although Melville quite likely did not have any grandiose or fully realized plan in this area, his prose between 1846 and 1857 shows a continuing tendency to invoke American place-names for purposes beyond literal reference. Melville seems to have absorbed information concerning the American continent--through actual, imagined, or reading experiences--and used references as he needed them to convey meaning. Melville expressed his personal regard for certain American geographic regions and topographic characteristics through his symbolic use of their actual place-names: Niagara Falls, the Mississippi, Hudson, and Inland Rivers, and the Erie Canal; the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Great Lakes; Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard; mountain ranges, most significantly the Catskills; Virginia, Kentucky, and the Deep South; New England; New York City.