![[image] from Chapter 44. The Chart
Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. The Modern Library (published by Random House) 1930.
[quote] ... you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. page 282 .](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:q66r3vy7xepmx62ti4vt7uzb/bafkreibub236xbib44gqmnhjy5j7et5nwcdfuukxc6vxm7rqcwisuqawha)
[image] from Chapter 44. The Chart Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. The Modern Library (published by Random House) 1930. [quote] ... you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. page 282 .
![[image of a journal article]
Nègre, Julien. (2022). The World in a Footnote: Examining Ahab’s Chart in Chapter 44 of Moby-Dick. Miranda. No. 26 Melville’s Measures. https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.47428
Abstract:
Chapter 44 of Moby-Dick (“The Chart”) includes a footnote comparing Ahab’s plan to track Moby Dick across the globe with Matthew F. Maury’s efforts to chart the winds and currents of the oceans and produce an accurate “whale chart.” This article unpacks the effects produced by the addition of the footnote in the chapter and uses it as a starting point for examining Ahab’s charts and discussing the interactions between map and text. At first sight, Maury’s chart is used as a stable reference point that reinforces the verisimilitude of Ahab’s plan. A comparison of Ahab’s use of nautical charts with actual documents used by whaling captains, though, reveals a disjunction between his cartographic ratiocinations and Maury’s work. Yet the most significant detail in the footnote might be the fact that Maury’s chart is “in course of completion”: far from being a definite document that the text can rely on to bolster the plausibility of Ahab’s method, the chart remains unseen—and even unseeable, since the version described in the footnote was never produced in reality. The “deictic” gesture performed by the footnote duplicates Ahab’s yearning for an object that constantly eludes him.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:q66r3vy7xepmx62ti4vt7uzb/bafkreibo5qzjfvyls32jfpxgfw456vrtepihckzzoz3hr4ppslhopesytu)
[image of a journal article] Nègre, Julien. (2022). The World in a Footnote: Examining Ahab’s Chart in Chapter 44 of Moby-Dick. Miranda. No. 26 Melville’s Measures. https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.47428 Abstract: Chapter 44 of Moby-Dick (“The Chart”) includes a footnote comparing Ahab’s plan to track Moby Dick across the globe with Matthew F. Maury’s efforts to chart the winds and currents of the oceans and produce an accurate “whale chart.” This article unpacks the effects produced by the addition of the footnote in the chapter and uses it as a starting point for examining Ahab’s charts and discussing the interactions between map and text. At first sight, Maury’s chart is used as a stable reference point that reinforces the verisimilitude of Ahab’s plan. A comparison of Ahab’s use of nautical charts with actual documents used by whaling captains, though, reveals a disjunction between his cartographic ratiocinations and Maury’s work. Yet the most significant detail in the footnote might be the fact that Maury’s chart is “in course of completion”: far from being a definite document that the text can rely on to bolster the plausibility of Ahab’s method, the chart remains unseen—and even unseeable, since the version described in the footnote was never produced in reality. The “deictic” gesture performed by the footnote duplicates Ahab’s yearning for an object that constantly eludes him.
#30DayMapChallenge
Day 2 - #lines
Then seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank.
#MobyDick #Chapter44 #TheChart #RockwellKent