After the whale: Melville in the wake of Moby-Dick

Part I: Moby-Dick and after

Moby-Dick and the divided body

Language and the ascetic body in Pierre and "Bartleby"

Israel potter and the search for the hearth

Part II: The limits of form

Toward deception: the short fiction and the failing body

Inverted worlds: "Benito Cereno" and The confidence-man

Part III: Reshaping the lost debate

The fissure in the hearth: Battle pieces

Clarel and the search for divine body

A question of distance: the late poetry

Part IV: An open ending

Billy Budd and the touch of a god.