Melville, Shame and the Evil Eye

This study offers a complex analysis of the psychodynamic role of shame in Melville's work, with detailed readings of Moby-Dick, Pierre, and "Billy Budd". Its concrete application of the rich analytic framework supplied by the work of such theorists as Heinz Kohut, Leon Wurmser, Silvan Tomkins, and Donald Nathanson implicitly challenges the contemporary reliance on an often abstract poststructuralist model of psychoanalysis. As a paradigmatic, coherent reading of the work of a single author, the book will appeal both to the many scholars interested in Melville's work and to anyone interested in psychoanalytic or psychological approaches to literature. "It is a very erudite book, bringing together sound scholarship in several areas: comparative literature, psycho-analysis, history, and philosophy...excellent". -- Leon Wurmser, author of The Hidden Dimension and The Mask of Shame "There is no better literary study of any corpus using psychodynamic notions, and none which wields the contemporary literature on shame with anything like the skill and coherence demonstrated by Adamson". -- Benjamin Kilborne, Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Studies