Description
Book SynopsisIn Inscrutable Malice, Jonathan A. Cook expertly illuminates Melville''s abiding preoccupation with the problem of evil and the dominant role of the Bible in shaping his best-known novel. Drawing on recent research in the fields of biblical studies, the history of religion, and comparative mythology, Cook provides a new interpretation of Moby-Dick that places Melville''s creative adaptation of the Bible at the center of the work.
Cook identifies two ongoing concerns in the narrative in relation to their key biblical sources: the attempt to reconcile the goodness of God with the existence of evil, as dramatized in the book of Job; and the discourse of the Christian end-times involving the final destruction of evil, as found in the apocalyptic books and eschatological passages of the Old and New Testaments.
With his detailed reading of Moby-Dick in relation to its most important source text, Cook greatly expands the reader''s understanding of the moral
Trade Review
This book has an added advantage of serving as a reader's guide to the novel, one which will be indispensable to any serious reader of Moby-Dick, whether for the first or the twentieth time.
* Sewanee Review *
The best reading of this iconic novel in recent memory. Under Cook's expert eye, Moby-Dick divulges secrets of the Second Coming and Melville's conflicting religious inclinations. Cook's masterful and wide-ranging command of Melville's library makes Moby-Dick into a guided tour through the Western canon.
* Religion & Literature *
Of all books about Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (and there are many), Jonathan A. Cook's is one that needed to be written. Cook organizes this potentially unwieldy and unfathomable topic in a way that scholars will find useful as a reference for repeated consultation.
* Nineteenth-Century Literature *
