Hershel Parker is an American professor of English and literature, noted for his research into the works of

Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...

. Parker is the H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus at the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially known as UD, UDel, or Delaware) is a Statutory college#Delaware, privately governed, state-assisted Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Newark, Delaware, United States. UD offers f ...

. He is co-editor with Harrison Hayford of the Norton Critical Edition of

's ''

Moby-Dick ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 Epic (genre), epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler ...

'' (1967, 2001, and 2017), and the General Editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of ''The Writings of Herman Melville'', which, with the publication of volume 13, "''Billy Budd, Sailor''" ''and Other Uncompleted Writings'', is now (2017) complete in fifteen volumes. Parker is the author of a two-volume biography of Herman Melville published by Johns Hopkins University Press (1996, 2002). Parker also edited the first ever one-volume edition of Melville's complete poetry, ''Herman Melville: Complete Poems'', published by the Library of America in 2019. Parker is an advocate of traditional methods of literary research, which emphasize access to original materials, encourage deliberate study of chronology, and examine the relationship between a literary work and the creative genius of its author. He has spoken out against academic schools of thought such as

New Criticism New Criticism was a Formalism (literature), formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of l ...

, post structuralism and

semiotics Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is a ...

which ignore or downplay scholarly analysis of authorial intention. In the mid-2010s Parker became a regular contributor to the webzine
Journal of the American Revolution
'. Now his ongoing genealogical research in relation to American history has led to a new book guided by Alma MacDougall to publication on March 12, 2024 - ''An Okie's Racial Reckonings''. Available now on Amazon as
Kindle ebook
o
Paperback
In the spirit of Jim Webb'
''Born Fighting''
but richly researched and detailed, it traces the involvement of Parker's newly identified ancestors in momentous episodes of American history. One disturbing chapter depicts a North Carolina kinsman who in 1873 won full pardons for all members of the KKK. His losing opponent was Albion W. Tourgée, later the novelist of the Reconstruction and the lawyer who lost Plessy v. Ferguson. Without engaging Eric Foner, this chapter clarifies and corrects his account i
Reconstruction
Like Parker's articles in
Journal of the American Revolution
', this book is written not from other books but from historical documents, many of which he discovered. This is history from the ground up, a new experiment in the uses of genealogy in writing American history. The book is astonishingly pertinent to 2024 American politics.

Melville biography

Volume 1 of Parker's two-volume biography, ''Herman Melville: A Biography, Vol. 1,1819-1851, Vol.2, 1851-1891'', was one of two finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Both volumes in turn won the highest award from the Association of American Publishers, the first volume in the category of “Literature and Language” (1997) and the second in a new category of “Biography and Autobiography” (2003). On September 22, 2008 at the inaugural public program of the CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography, "An Eloquent Beginning", one of the presenters, Pulitzer Prize winner

John Matteson John Matteson (born March 3, 1961) is an American professor of English and legal writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his first book, '' Eden's Outc ...

, read aloud the first paragraph of ''Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851'', as an example of how “the opening paragraph should reflect the character of the subject, the way the music of a great aria fits the mood of the words being sung". In 2013 Parker published ''Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative'', a companion volume to the two-volume biography that is, in part, a memoir of the decades of collaborative research that established a documentary, archival foundation for the two-volume biography. In ''Melville Biography'', Parker also looks at the various theoretical approaches to editing, biography, and literary criticism widely practiced in recent decades — including Marxist Theory, The New Criticism, The New Historicism, Post-Structuralism, and Deconstruction — that he believes fostered the ahistorical, antiarchival biases that likely led some critics and reviewers to publish negative critiques of the two-volume biography. The book was singled out in ''The New Yorker Blog'' as a book to "watch out for" and received accolades from the respected biographer Carl Rollyson in his ''Wall Street Journal'' review "The Hunt for Herman Melville".

Editorial Projects: Herman Melville

He has undertaken five long-term collaborative projects. He was Associate General Editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of ''The Writings of Herman Melville'' for 13 volumes and is General Editor for the final two volumes, ''Published Poems'' (2009) and ''“Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Uncompleted Writings'' (2017). He edited the 1820-1865 section of ''The Norton Anthology of American Literature'' (1979 and the next four editions); much of his work remains in the sixth edition (2007), according to Norton policy. For each of the four volumes of the edition of Melville in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, edited by Philippe Jaworski (1997–2010), he contributed a “Chronologie". Since 1986 he has been expanding Jay Leyda’s chronological documentary life, ''The Melville Log'', from 1000 pages in the 1969 edition to 9000 pages. Parker has in preparation a three-volume selection to be published by the Gordian Press with Robert A. Sandberg collaborating as design and layout editor. In addition, Parker has written articles and books in collaboration with other scholars, most frequently with Brian Higgins, as in their Louisiana State University Press publication ''Reading Melville’s'' “''Pierre; or, The Ambiguities''” (2006).

Recovering Lost Authority in American Novels

In the 1970s Parker pioneered the study of lost authority in standard American novels by

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

, F. Scott Fitzgerald,

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...

and others. His work on

Stephen Crane Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...

repeatedly evoked threats of lawsuits from

Fredson Bowers Fredson Thayer Bowers (1905–1991) was an American Bibliography, bibliographer and scholar of Textual criticism, textual editing. Career Bowers was a graduate of Brown University and Harvard University (Ph.D.). He taught at Princeton University ...

for alleging sloppiness in both theory and practice in Bowers' Virginia Edition of Crane's works. Parker’s 1984 ''Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction'' was the first book systematically to bring biographical evidence to bear on textual theory, literary criticism, and literary theory. Frequently attacked by reviewers trained in the New Criticism as well as by proponents of the New Bibliography of

W. W. Greg Sir Walter Wilson Greg (9 July 1875 – 4 March 1959), known professionally as W. W. Greg, was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century. Family and education Greg was born at Wimbledon Common in 1875. His ...

and

, ''Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons'' nevertheless has been applied to their problems by biblical, classical, and medieval scholars as well as by critics of more modern literature. See for example Sally Bushell, ''Text as Process'', John Van Engen, ''Past and Future of Medieval Studies'', Alison M. Jack, ''Texts Reading Texts Sacred and Secular 2'', Robert S. Kawashima, “Comparative Literature and Biblical Studies: The Case of Allusion", Tim William Machan, ''Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts'', Michael J. Meyer, ''Literature and Music'', James J. O’Hara, “Trying Not to Cheat: Responses to Inconsistencies in Roman Epic", and Peter L. Shillingsburg, ''Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age''.

Selected bibliography

*Parker, Hershel, ed. (2019), ''Herman Melville: Complete Poems'',

Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ...

, 990 pp. (reviewed by

Helen Vendler Helen Vendler (née Hennessy; April 30, 1933 – April 23, 2024) was an American academic, writer and literary critic. She was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities. Her aca ...

, ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...

'', 5 December 2019, pp. 29, 32–34). * * * * * * * * * * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Parker, Hershel Living people Lamar University alumni University of Delaware faculty 1935 births American literary historians American male non-fiction writers Herman Melville