In my numerous OEN articles about Melville, I have discussed various secondary sources. In the present review essay about Melville, I discuss two books by Harvard's Americanist Perry Miller (1905-1963): (1) his 1956 book The Raven and the Whale; and (2) his 1965 posthumously published book The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War: Books One Through Three, edited by Elizabeth W. Miller.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) September 27, 2021: My favorite scholar is the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955).

Ong the lifelong city boy from Kansas City, Missouri, entered the Jesuit novitiate, a farm in Florissant, Missouri, in September 1935. Subsequently, after completing the two-year Jesuit novitiate experience, as next part of his Jesuit formation, he was sent for graduate studies to Saint Louis University (SLU), the Jesuit university, founded in 1818, in St. Louis, Missouri (USA). At SLU, in 1941, he completed two degrees: a Licentiate in philosophy and a Master's in English. (The Licentiate degree in philosophy was roughly equivalent to a Master's degree.)

For an account of the American Catholic intellectual milieu in which young Walter Ong's Catholic education developed, see the American Catholic historian Philip Gleason's book Contending with Modernity: [American] Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1995).

Now, from the young Canadian Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) then teaching English at SLU, Ong first heard of Perry Miller's massively researched 1939 book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press). In it, Perry Miller in English at Harvard University explained, to the best of his ability, then then largely forgotten thought of the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572). In the 1930s, Ramus was largely a forgotten figure. However, his logic (also known as dialectic) had dominated the curriculum of Harvard College, founded in 1636 in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and of Cambridge University in England.

The English poet and pamphleteer John Milton (1608-1674) studied Ramist logic at Cambridge University. Subsequently, he wrote a textbook in logic based largely on one of Ramus' textbooks. Later in Milton's life, after he had become famous, he published his textbook in logic. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger translated Milton's Logic for volume eight of Yale's Complete Prose Works of John Milton: 1666-1682, edited by Maurice Kelley (Yale University Press, 1982, pages 139-407). Ong's lengthy "Introduction" in it is reprinted, slightly shortened, as "Introduction to Milton's Logic" in volume four of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999, pages 111-142).

Perry Miller reports that among the college-educated men in seventeenth-century New England that he studied, he found only one self-described Aristotelian; all the others were self-described Ramists. In medieval universities under Roman Catholic auspices, Roman Catholic educators subscribed to what they thought of as the Aristotelian tradition of logic. Consequently, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant educators tended to embrace Ramist logic as a way to further differentiate themselves from Roman Catholics generally.

For an account of Jesuit educators in the Counter-Reformation, see the American Jesuit church historian John W. O'Malley's book The First Jesuits (Harvard University Press, 1993). Under the auspices of both Protestant educators and Roman Catholic educators, formal education emerged as growth industry, figuratively speaking, after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s.

However, despite Perry Miller's best efforts in his 1939 book to explain the thought of Peter Ramus in his 1939 book, he in the end called for a more thorough study of this largely forgotten figure in Western cultural history.

Subsequently, after Ong had completed the further steps in his lengthy Jesuit formation, and had been ordained a priest, he stepped for to undertake the more thorough study of Ramus that Perry Miller had called for in his 1939 book. Perry Miller agreed to serve as the director of Ong's doctoral dissertation in English at Harvard. Ong's massively researched doctoral dissertation on Ramus was published, slightly revised, by Harvard University Press in two volumes in 1958.

For further discussion of Ong's philosophical thought in his 1958 books and in the subsequent works of his mature thought from the early 1950s onward, see my lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):

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Perry Miller on Nineteenth-Century Antebellum America

Recently, I read Harvard's Americanist Perry Miller's fine 1956 book The Raven and the Whale about the New York literary scene that included the editor and publisher Evert A. Duyckinck (1816-1878) and the Young America nationalistic literary group - which influenced the novelist, short story author, and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891). However, in Perry Miller's 1956 book, he does not mention Melville's poetry. Rather, he limits himself to discussing only Melville's antebellum prose narratives.

Now, the spirit of the nationalistic literary group that Duyckinck promoted is manifest in Melville's anonymously published (in two parts) 1850 nationalistic literary manifesto "Hawthorne and His Mosses: By a Virginian Spending July in Vermont" - written around the time when Melville was writing his ambitious experimental 1851 novel Moby-Dick and his subsequent ambitious experimental 1852 novel Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (both of which were commercial failures in the United States).

Now, Perry Miller says, "Amid this confusion, the American Review's silence about [Melville's 1851 novel] Moby-Dick becomes more eloquent than the anguish of Evert Duyckinck, but into what a cunningly contrived trap [Melville's 1852 novel] Pierre was to enter appears from a treatise in the Knickerbocker for April, 1852, on that subject which, one would suppose, everyone had heard more than enough: -- the distinction between genius and talent. Genius, as all these journalistic recastings of Coleridge had it, is creative; talent is executive. 'Genius revels in the ideal and the possible; talent delves in the real and the actual.' Genius derives its strength from the heart rather than the head, is 'prone to be warm, tender, profuse, spontaneous, gushing, full of sympathy, and careless of itself and the tomorrow.' 'I stand for the heart,' Melville had written Hawthorne, 'To the dogs with the head!'" (page 304). (I discuss Melville's statement further below.)

Perry Miller also says, "The story of the monumental failure of [Melville's 1852 novel] Pierre - in the sense, that is, that wherever it was reviewed, it was condemned; but more importantly, it was so contemptuously dismissed that it did not even create a scandal - is now familiar. For those who can read it, Pierre is a fascinating book: it sums up and turns inside out not only the stereotyped contest of the blonde and the brunette, but the Byronic hero, the opposition of country and city, and a hundred other themes" (page 305).

So, even though young Melville the writer in the 1850s viewed himself as a distinctively American writer, his book-reading contemporary fellow Americans were evidently not yet prepared to respond favorably to his ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852.

But were Melville's book-reading contemporary fellow Americans too deeply influenced by the kinds of books they had been reading by popular English authors and by less distinctive American authors?

Or, if Melville did indeed represent a distinctively American voice emerging in his two ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852, why weren't more contemporary book-reading Americans prepared to read his two ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852 and respond to them favorably enough to spread the word about them through word of mouth to other contemporary book-reading Americans?

Granted, book reviewers may have played a role in promoting book sales. But book sales usually also depend on word-of-mouth reviews among book-reading Americans.

At the time, oral reading of books aloud in a family setting was still common enough. Melville's prose in his two ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852 would presumably have made them suitable for reading aloud in a family setting among adults in the family. But would the content of his two experimental novels of 1851 and 1852 have been suitable reading matter for a family setting among contemporary book-reading Americans, even among the adults in the family? Or was their content somehow too challenging for most contemporary American adults?

In any event, Melville's 1850 nationalistic literary manifesto "Hawthorne and His Mosses: By a Virginian Spending July in Vermont" in reprinted in the 2018 third edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick, edited by Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Norton, pages 544-558).

For a reliable text of Melville's ambitious experimental 1852 novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, see the 2017 Norton Critical Edition of it, edited by Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinstein (New York: W. W. Norton).

Next, with these questions in the back of my mind, I turned to Harvard Americanist Perry Miller's posthumously published unfinished 1965 book The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War: Books One Through Three, edited by Elizabeth W. Miller (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World). It was the winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in History.

As odd as this may sound, I would say that Perry Miller's Book One: "The Evangelical Basis" (pages 1-95) of his posthumously published 1965 book provides a wonderful religious cultural context for his 1956 book The Raven and the Whale, especially with reference to Melville.

Now, Perry Miller's title "The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War" echoes the title of his massively researched 1939 classic The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press). In both his 1939 book and his 1965 book, Perry Miller uses published texts to establish the contours in the "Mind" among book-reading persons of the time.

However, in both seventeenth-century New England and nineteenth-century America, there were also persons who were not book-reading persons, even though American Protestants were encouraged to read the 1611 King James Bible. But many of the non-book-reading persons in seventeenth-century New England and in nineteenth-century America may have encountered book-reading persons in the clergy and in other persons as well.

A relevant classic for understanding the mix of non-book-reading persons and book-reading persons in American culture historically is the Harvard sociologist David Riesman's 1950 book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Yale University Press). In Riesman's terminology, the character, as he refers to it, of non-book-reading persons tends to be outer-directed (or tradition-directed). By contrast, the character of the book-reading persons tends to be inner-directed.

However, we should note that there are degrees to which various persons may be outer-directed or inner-directed. For example, if we accept Melville's own characterization of his inner life, then we would have to say that he experienced a further unfolding of his inner life as he took up writing his books Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) (both of which were commercial successes) and his first ambitious experimental novel Mardi (1849) (which was not a commercial success).

For a reliable text of Melville's first ambitious experimental 1849 novel Mardi and A Voyage Thither, see the Northwestern University Press edition published in 1998.

Now, in Harvard's Americanist Perry Miller's posthumously published unfinished 1965 book, he titles Book One: "The Evangelical Basis" (pages 1-95); Book Two: "The Legal Mentality" (pages 97-265); and the uncompleted Book Three: "Science - Theoretical and Applied" (pages 267-313). In the back matter, Elizabeth W. Miller includes Perry Miller's detailed plans for his ambitious study (pages 314-327). In her "Acknowledgments" (page 328), she says that he taught a "course on romanticism in America" at Harvard. The "Index" follows (pages 329-338).

When I examine the "Index" in Perry Miller's 1956 book The Raven and the Whale with the "Index" in his 1965 book, I note that James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is the most frequently discussed writer who appears in both books.

In Perry Miller's Book Two: "The Legal Mentality," he discusses Lemuel Shaw, Melville's father-in-law (for specific pages references to Shaw, see the "Index" [page 336]).

In Perry Miller's Book One: "The Evangelical Basis" (of the American Mind), he discusses the theory and practice of revivals. Not surprisingly, the theorists of revivals that he discusses were also prominent practitioners who preached revivals.

Overall, the American Protestant revivals spectacularly exemplified what Ong came to refer to as residual orality. In general, preaching involves oratorical/rhetorical presentations. But the preaching in American Protestant revivals also involved deliberately arousing excitements - with a flair.

Ong writes explicitly about residual orality in his 1965 PMLA article "Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style," which is reprinted in the 600-page 2002 book An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pages 313-329).

Because the preaching at American Protestant revivals were, in effect, non-denominational liturgical services that evoked a strong sense of participation, perhaps Ong's essay "Mass in Ewondo" in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America, volume 131, number 8 (September 28, 1974): pages 148-151 is most relevant for understanding this dimension of the revivals. Ong's 1974 essay is reprinted in volume four of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999, pages 103-110).

Now, in Perry Miller's Book One: "The Evangelical Basis," Chapter II: "Unity through Diversity" (pages 36-72) recounts how the theorists of revivals discussed the supposed communitarian benefits of revivals (my terminology, not Perry Miller's). Perry Miller says, "After 1800, the vast literature in defense of the Revival is unabashedly communal" (page 11). In David Riesman's terminology, the supposed communal/ communitarian benefits of revivals would tend to involve outer-directed persons (also known as tradition-directed persons).

Perry Miller quotes one unidentified writer as writing the following in 1845 about revivals: "'It is not enterprise, or physical improvements, or a glorious constitution and good laws, or free trade, or a tariff, or railroads and steamships, or philosophy, or science, or taste; but the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, appearing to every man [and woman], and inwrought into the heart of every man [and woman], that can save us from the fate of former republics, and make us a blessing to all nations'" (quoted on page 13).

The unidentified writer is envisioning a profound process of enculturation of American Protestant values in American society (my terminology, not Perry Miller's).

Perry Miller says, "The question before each community [in a revival] was whether it was acting as community" (page 19).

Now, in David Riesman's terminology, the economic liberalism of American capitalism would tend to promote inner-directed persons - and so would the political liberalism of the American experiment in democracy (e.g., one man, one vote - before the vote was extended to women).

Now, the American Protestant revival preacher and theorist Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) came to preaching revivals from a background in the practice of law. His background in cross-examining witnesses and in addressing juries contributed to his skill in cross-examining persons who stepped forward in revivals and to addressing the other persons in the revivals.

Now, Perry Miller says, "Finney's basic theorem was that everybody can agree upon intellectual propositions [i.e., intellectual propositions of faith and morals advanced by competing American Protestant churches]. The difference is that some grasp them with the heart, others with only the mind. Thus at Troy and New Lebanon [where Finney spoke publicly on March 24, 1827, and on July 18, 1827, respectively], Finney proposed a disjunction which - though it had long figured in literary metaphor and had been dealt with by [Jonathan] Edwards [1703-1758] - had acquired a new vitality in romantic literature and in religious exhortation, that of the head versus the heart, of intellect versus emotion. [Lyman] Beecher [1775-1863] was perfectly familiar with the verbal distinction; he never could comprehend that at New Lebanon he met a creature prepared to say, in language later used by Herman Melville, 'To the dogs with the Head'" (pages 25-26).

Wow! Melville is enunciating a rather radical position in denouncing what he refers to as the "Head." However that may be, can we correctly infer from his statement that he is writing in his two ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852 for the "Heart" (whatever all that terminology may mean)? If we do make this inference tentatively, may we also then infer that whatever this terminology may mean, few of Melville's contemporary American book-readers had "Hearts" that were ready to receive his two ambitious experimental novels of 1851 and 1852?

But if the intellectual propositions of faith and moral advanced by competing American Protestant churches are aligned with the "Head," then the propositional statements in the Declaration of Independence are also aligned with the "Head" - as are various other non-religious propositional statements. But how many Americans in Melville's time or at any other time have formed their own personal sense of identity without aligning themselves, to one degree or another, with certain propositional statements that are important to them personally and to their own sense of personal identity?

Nevertheless, in defense of Melville's valorization of the "Heart," I would align what he refers to as the "Heart" with what C. G. Jung and his followers refer to as the feeling/valuing function, on the one hand, and, on the other, what the Roman Catholic tradition of thought refers to as the discernment of spirits in one's psyche.

For a brief discussion of what the Roman Catholic tradition of thought refers to as the discernment of spirits in one's psyche, see the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong's 1986 book about the Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press, pages 78-81 and 87), the published version of Ong's 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto.

Incidentally, Ong did his massively researched Harvard doctoral dissertation under Perry Miller on the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572). Perry Miller discusses Ramus and Ramist logic in his 1939 book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, mentioned above. Ong's dissertation, slightly revised, was published in two volumes by Harvard University Press in 1958.

But it strikes me that another point that Ong makes elsewhere may also be relevant to how we interpret Melville's radical position in denouncing what he refers to as the "Head" and in valorizing the "Heart."

In Ong's essay "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems" in his 1977 350-page book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, pages 305-341), he plays with systems terminology about closed systems and open systems.

But he notes that it is not tenable for human persons to live, or try to live, their lives as completely open systems. Even if they come to recognize certain aspects of their lives as representing, in effect, closed systems of thought and feeling, and then work to extricate themselves from those now undesirable closed systems of thought and feeling, they are not well advised, in Ong's estimate, to attempt to embrace, instead, a completely open system of thought and feeling - which appears to be what Melville is endorsing in his radical position in denouncing what he refers to as the "Head."

Rather, Ong advocates for human persons that more moderate position that he refers to as open closure.

Now, as far as I know, Ong does not work with the Head/Heart contrast in any of his 400 or so distinctive publications (not counting translations and reprintings as distinctive publications).

Nevertheless, Ong does work with another contrast that happens to include propositional statements as one of the two contrasting terms. In Ong's frequently reprinted 1958 essay "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self," he borrows a contrast from the French philosopher and playwright Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) about belief "that" (a propositional statement is true) and belief "in" (a human or divine person). However, what Ong and Marcel mean by belief "in" does not accentuate the emotional dimension that Melville and Finney seem to emphasize in the "Heart"/ "Head" contrast.

Because Ong characterized his mature thought from the early 1950s onward as phenomenological and personalist in cast, we need to investigate further what he means by personalist in cast. In my estimate, the answer is to be found in his 1986 book Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press), mentioned above. In it, Ong advances the distinction between subject-oriented but not simply subjective (page 95; but also see pages 83 and 130) - a distinction that he finds in twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology. Without explicitly making this crucial philosophical distinction, Melville runs the risk of valorizing the simply subjective and solipsistic in his valorization of the "Heart" over the "Head."

Ong's 1958 essay is reprinted, for example, in the 600-page 2002 anthology An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pages 259-275).

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview