"They but reflect the things": style and rhetorical purpose in Melville's "The Piazza Tale"

Style, Spring, 2001 by Scott A. Kemp

I. 1856 Reviews of The Piazza Tales

Surveying the critical heritage of The Piazza Tales indicates today's academic scholars have neglected what initial reviewers foregrounded in assessing the collected stories: Melville's style as a writer. In 1856, American reviewers were clearly taken by phrases such as the one, "in the cool elysium of my northern bower," associating them with leisurely repose on a comfortable summer afternoon. In contrast, today we tend to focus less on the feeling intimated by the style of Melville's writing than on his ideas. A case in point, William Bysshe Stein, in "Melville's Comedy of Faith," argues that "The Piazza Tale" is about "the hero's quest for spiritual regeneration, a faith in divine light that will reconcile him to the dislocating polarities of good and evil in the world" (315). Such interpretations are common in Melville Studies, but in focusing on Melville's ideas exclusive of his style we are neglecting an essential part of Melville's methodology as a writer: his manipulation of style to emphasize his id eas. And no tale in the Melville canon demonstrates this emphasis more than "The Piazza Tale."

Three noticeable patterns of response emerge from analyzing the reviews of The Piazza Tales appearing immediately after the collection's publication in 1856. Although they all deal with the style of the tales, reviewers in 1856 had a difficult time characterizing it. More than once reviewers applied the adjective "peculiar" in labeling his exorbitant language: "all of [the tales] exhibit that peculiar richness of language, descriptive vitality, and splendidly imaginative" quality characteristic of Melville, wrote one reviewer (482). (6) Thomas Powell's depiction of the Piazza Tales in the New York News exemplifies the attitude of many reviewers in the early summer of 1856, just after the collection was published: "magnificent descriptions of scenery, sea and cloud-land, resembles Tennysonian verse" (470). Perhaps the poetic richness of Melville's language was Tennysonian, but American reviewers looked for comparisons among writers in the short tradition of American fiction. For one, Poe was the best associat ion in descriptive power they could link with Melville: "The weird, fantastic fancy of Poe [...] is in reasonable measure shared by Melville" (474). For another, the "mysterious" and "strange" things Melville writes of could only be compared with Charles Brockden Brown (474). Hawthorne, by comparison, was considered more "dry, prosaic, and detailed," while Irving had a style more "elegant, careful, and popular" (474). Melville, conversely, seemed more of a "wizard" (474). Clearly, reviewers recognized that Melville's writing style was unique, but exactly how it was unique was less clear.

A second noticeable pattern relates to reviewer preference. Many reviewers highlighted for mention the stories that still command our attention today. They most overtly preferred "Bartleby, the Scrivener," "Benito Cereno," and "The Encantadas," particularly with regard to the stories' topics. That these stories have maintained importance in the Melville canon attests to how little reader expectations--at least in terms of topical interest-- have changed from 1856 to today. But beneath the surface of the reviews--and important for my analysis here, it is the style or styles of "The Piazza Tale," the introductory tale of the collection, that clearly attracted contemporary readers. Though not mentioned nearly as often as the other tales, "The Piazza Tale" was singularly highlighted by reviewers. Notice the effect consistently described in the following responses: the book "would be an excellent companion for a summer tour" (478); it's "a delightful companion for an afternoon lounge" (478); "each [tale] forms th e feast of a long summer's noon" (482). That this effect can be linked with "The Piazza Tale" specifically is evident in statements made by various reviewers: says one, "All of [the tales] exhibit that peculiar richness of language, descriptive vitality" that awaken in the reader "a deep longing to gaze with him upon the sublime and lovely scenery which his words paint so well" (482). Melville, says another, "proves to travel into the mystic regions of fairy land, that it is very seldom he can be either appreciated or understood" (473). These are all direct references to the narrator's gazing from his piazza into the scenery of the Berkshire mountains and his eventual journey there represented in "The Piazza Tale." The reader's desiring to "lounge" directly parallels the disposition of the narrator, who in the tale chooses a "royal lounge of turf--a green velvet lounge, with long, moss-padded back" to "leisurely" gaze upon the mountains around his home (2).