Melville’s debts to Cervantes have received scant attention, but Moby-Dick bears the deep imprint of Don Quixote . In particular, Cervantes helped Melville clarify a problem he sensed in democracy and modernity: pervasive feelings of loneliness, aimlessness, and prosaicness leave individuals susceptible to madmen who promise to reenchant life with the regal fullness of fiction. While Don Quixote celebrates the comic possibilities of this hunger for fictionality, Moby-Dick highlights its tragic potential for disaster.
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Kenyon Gradert (2024) studied this question.
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