Herman Melville’s 1849 novel Redburn: His First Voyage offers fertile ground for developing a pleasure-oriented reading practice drawn from queer theory because several of its strangest linguistic events are both perceptibly erotic and not about human subjectivity (nor even the human bodies subjectivity inhabits) at all. The novel follows Wellingborough Redburn on his “first voyage” from a sheltered, increasingly shabby New England home to the international ports of Liverpool and back again. Throughout, Redburn is exposed to physical labor and its dangers, to the complexities of international economics, and to interpersonal relations with individuals sympathetic and off-putting; the novel is often interpreted as a realist journey from innocence to experience. Understood to detail the early adventures of its much-studied author, Redburn challenges us to read beyond the subject precisely because subject creation has dominated discussions of the novel. Redburn’s comparatively minor position in the Melville canon and its current critical revival remain yoked to views expressed by the author and promulgated by early critics. Viewing the novel as too pleasurable, many have approached it as an auxiliary analytic object. Melville famously called Redburn “nothing but cakes & ale” to placate anxious publisher Richard Bentley, then taking a sea-bath in the failure of Mardi, a dense philosophical experiment (Correspondence 132). Following Melville, subsequent readers invoke “cakes & ale” when describing, even lamenting, the novel’s secondary status. Alongside the perception of superficiality floats the specter of autobiography, an imaginative failure haunting Redburn’s potential. Although William Gilman sought a “vigorous challenge to the school which identifies Melville with Redburn” (547), his foundational work had the opposite effect. More than a half-century later, “many explicitly or implicitly assign [Redburn] merely the instrumental value of illuminating its author and his other achievements” (Hager 307). This limitation of interpretive possibility might stem from widely held, long circulated beliefs about Melville as historical subject: he is philosophically profound, bleakly ironic, and, above all, invested in cultural critique.

中文翻译：

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“我希望我是黄油松饼：”面向对象文本的乐趣

赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）1849年的小说《雷德本：他的第一次航行》为发展以酷儿理论为导向的以阅读为导向的阅读实践提供了沃土，因为它的一些最奇怪的语言事件都是感知性的，而不是人类的主观性（甚至人类的主观性也不存在）。所有。小说跟随韦灵伯勒·雷德本（Wellingborough Redburn）的“第一次航行”，从一个庇护越来越破旧的新英格兰居住地到利物浦的国际港口，再返回。整个过程中，雷德本都面临体力劳动及其带来的危险，国际经济学的复杂性以及同情和不满的个人的人际关系。这部小说通常被解释为从纯真到经验的现实主义旅程。了解了详细研究其备受关注的作者的早期冒险经历，雷德本挑战我们要超越主题地阅读，恰恰是因为主题创作主导了对小说的讨论。雷德本在梅尔维尔教规中的相对次要地位及其当前的批判复兴仍然受到作者表达和早期批评者颁布的观点的追捧。认为这部小说太过愉快了，许多人将其作为辅助分析对象。梅尔维尔（Melville）著名地把雷德本（Redburn）称为“蛋糕与啤酒”，以安抚焦虑的出版商理查德·本特利（Richard Bentley），然后在一场激烈的哲学实验玛迪（Madi）的失败中坐上海水浴（通讯132）。继梅尔维尔之后，随后的读者在描述，甚至感叹小说的次要地位时都使用“蛋糕与啤酒”。除了对肤浅的认识之外，自传的幽灵也浮出水面，一场充满想象力的失败困扰着雷德本的潜能。尽管威廉·吉尔曼（William Gilman）寻求“对使梅尔维尔（Melville）与雷德本（Redburn）相符的学校的严峻挑战”（547），但他的基础工作却产生了相反的效果。半个多世纪以后，“许多人明确或隐含地赋予[Redburn]仅是阐明其作者及其其他成就的工具价值”（Hager 307）。这种解释可能性的局限性可能源于关于梅尔维尔（Melville）作为历史题材的广泛持有的，长期流传的信念：他在哲学上博大精深，具有讽刺意味，并且首先是对文化批评的投入。“许多人明确或隐含地赋予[Redburn]仅是阐明其作者及其其他成就的工具价值”（Hager 307）。这种解释可能性的局限性可能源于关于梅尔维尔（Melville）作为历史题材的广泛持有的，长期流传的信念：他在哲学上博大精深，具有讽刺意味，并且首先是对文化批评的投入。“许多人明确或隐含地赋予[Redburn]仅是阐明其作者及其其他成就的工具价值”（Hager 307）。这种解释可能性的局限性可能源于人们对梅尔维尔（Melville）作为历史主体的广泛持有，长期流传的信念：他在哲学上博大精深，具有讽刺意味，并且首先是对文化批评的投入。