Samuel R. Delany’s 1968 novel Nova is a conscious rewriting of MobyDick that plays at the intersection of science fiction, African American, and gay literature. Within science-fiction circles, Nova was immediately acclaimed a breakthrough text, giving (among other things) critical visibility to the now iconic cyborg. Most elements of Moby-Dick are present in Nova, albeit estranged and altered: captain, crew, artist-figure as narrator, ocean, quest, polyphony, cultural encyclopedism, even the doubloon (in the shape of tarot cards). Only the whale is transmuted into an elusive substance, an ambiguously all-significant absence, comparable to Melville’s “whiteness of the whale.” More than any other recent work of science fiction, Delany’s novel achieves a kind of epic of cosmopolitanism, combining race, sexuality, and politics, that grasps at the totality of Melville’s Moby-Dick. Delany’s versions of Ahab and Ishmael will serve as the central focus of the essay.
In the Shadow of No Whales: Rewriting Moby-Dick in Samuel R. Delany's Nova
PROIETTI, Salvatore
2013-01-01
Abstract
Samuel R. Delany’s 1968 novel Nova is a conscious rewriting of MobyDick that plays at the intersection of science fiction, African American, and gay literature. Within science-fiction circles, Nova was immediately acclaimed a breakthrough text, giving (among other things) critical visibility to the now iconic cyborg. Most elements of Moby-Dick are present in Nova, albeit estranged and altered: captain, crew, artist-figure as narrator, ocean, quest, polyphony, cultural encyclopedism, even the doubloon (in the shape of tarot cards). Only the whale is transmuted into an elusive substance, an ambiguously all-significant absence, comparable to Melville’s “whiteness of the whale.” More than any other recent work of science fiction, Delany’s novel achieves a kind of epic of cosmopolitanism, combining race, sexuality, and politics, that grasps at the totality of Melville’s Moby-Dick. Delany’s versions of Ahab and Ishmael will serve as the central focus of the essay.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
