There is no record of anything Herman Melville (1819-1891) may have thought or said about «Bartleby the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street», his single most famous tale, published just over 150 years ago today. It is actually for a whole gamut of reasons that the text is unlikely to ever yield an interpretive consensus gentium, the insights of such magisterial figures as F.O. Matthiessen, Ralph Ellison, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, or Slavoj Zizek notwithstanding. The volume adds to the nearly global 'Bartleby Industry' with contributions by Andrzej Kopcewicz (Pozna), Joseph Kuhn (Pozna), Marek Pary (Warsaw), Tadeusz Rachwa (Warsaw), Janusz Semrau (Pozna), Tadeusz Sawek (Katowice), and Marek Wilczyski (Gdask). Written independently over a period of time, the readings range from circumferentially intertextual to intra-textually semiotic-medical to post-psychoanalytical to post-post-modern to re-de-constructive to neo-classical-symbolic to jurisprudential-allegorical.

Autorentext

The Editor: Janusz Semrau teaches American literature at the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznä. He is the author of various publications.

Inhalt

Contents: Andrzej Kopcewicz: Dark rooms and Bartleby. An intertextual reading - Joseph Kuhn: Bartleby in Egypt - Marek Paryz: Narrative uses of medical discourse in «Bartleby» and Billy Budd - Tadeusz Rachwal: Undeliverables. A response to Bartleby - Janusz Semrau: «He would do nothing in the office: why should he stay there?» Domesticating «Bartleby» - Tadeusz Slawek: Bartleby, almost Bartleby - Marek Wilczynski: Melville after Lacan: «Bartleby» and the reader's desire.