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Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener": A Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Walter. "Form and Meaning in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" Studies in Short Fiction 18 (Fall 1981): 383-93. Narrator is guided by self-interest.

Arvin, Newton. Herman Melville. New York: Viking, 1950. Says that B. is a parable of the frustrated relations between the man of letters and man of the business world.

Ayo, Nicholas. "Bartleby's Lawyer on Trial." Arizona Quarterly 28 (1972): 27-38.

Barber, Patricia. "What if Bartleby Were a Woman?" The Authority of Experience Essays in Feminist Criticism. Ed. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1977.

Barnett, Louise K. "Bartleby as Alienated Worker." Studies in Short Fiction 11 (Fall 1974): 379-95.

Beja, Morris. "Bartleby and Schizophrenia." Massachusetts Review 19 (1978): 555-568.

Bergmann, Johannes Dietrich. "Bartleby and The Lawyer's Story." American Literature 47 (1975): 432-36. Argues that B. is based on a story in the NY Times on Feb. 18, 1853.

Berthold, Michael C. "The Prison World of Melville's Pierre and 'Bartleby'." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 33 (1987): 227-52.

Bickley, R. Bruce, Jr. "'Bartleby' as Paradigm." The Method of Melville's Shorter Tales. Durham, N. C.: Duke U P, 1979. Sees Lawyer as "the controlling consciousness in [Washington] Irving" and B. as a narrator like Geoffrey Crayon.

Bickley, R. Bruce, Jr. "The Minor Fiction of Hawthorne and Melville." ATQ 14 (1972): 149-52. Says that Hawthorne is the model for Bartleby.

Brodwin, Stanley. "To the Frontiers of Eternity: Melville's Crossing in 'Bartleby the Scrivener.'"Bartleby the Inscrutable: A Collection of Commentary on Herman Melville's Tale "Bartleby the Scrivener." Ed. M. Thomas Inge. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. 174-96.

Bulger, Thomas. "'Bartleby,' Burton, and the Artistic Temperament." Melville Society Extracts (June 1995): 14-17.

Busch, Frederick. "Thoreau and Melville as Cellmates." Modern Fiction Studies 23 (Summer 1977): 239-42.

Chase, Richard. "A Parable of the Artist." In Bartleby the Inscrutable. 78-84.

Clark, Michael. "Witches and Wall Street: Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law." Texas Studies in Language and Literature 25 (Spring 1983): 55-76. Contends that B. is about the death of Puritanism and that the narrator interrogates B. just as the Puritans grilled the "witches."

Colwell, James L., and Gary Spitzer. "'Bartleby' and 'The Raven': Parallels of the Irrational." Georgia Review 23 (Spring 1969): 37-43. B. as Roderick Usher.

Conkling, Chris. "Misery of Christian Joy: Conscience and Freedom in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener." Literature and Belief (1981) 79-89.

D'Avanzo, Mario L. "Melville's 'Bartleby' and Carlyle." A Symposium: Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville Annual, 1965). Ed. Howard P. Vincent. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1966. 113-39.

Dillingham, William B. "Unconscious Duplicity: 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1977. Says that lawyer tells us far more of the truth than he intends; we need to look for inconsistencies.

Donaldson, Scott. "The Dark Truth of The Piazza Tales. " PMLA 85 (October 1970). Argues that this is a tale of slavery and B. a slave who pays the price of insurrection.

Emery, Allan. "The Alternatives of Melville's 'Bartleby.'" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 31 (1976): 170-87. Describes contemporary street people who might have served as models for B.

Evans, Walter. "Hawthorne and 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" ATQ 57 (1985) 45-58. Contends that Hawthorne is in B. but is the figure of the lawyer, not the figure of B.

Fiene, Donald M. "Bartleby the Christ." American Transcendental Quarterly 7 (Summer 1970): 18-23). Sees B. as Christ with dead letters as New Testament.

Foley, Brian. "Dickens Revised: 'Bartleby' and Bleak House." Essays in Literature 12 (Fall 1985).

Franklin, Bruce. The Wake of the Gods. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford U P, 1963. Argues that B. illustrates Christ's injunction in Matthew 25:34-40. Concludes that B. is not only Christ but a Hindu ascetic.

Friedman, Michael H. "Pickwick Papers as a Source for the Epilogue to Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" Studies in Short Fiction 21 (Spring 1984): 147-51.

Gardner, John. "Bartleby: Art and Social Commitment." Philological Quarterly 43 (January 1964): 87-98.

Giddings, T. H. "Melville, the Colt-Adams Murder, and 'Bartleby.'"Studies in American Fiction 2 (1974): 123-32. Finds parallels in a famous contemporary trial, although M. was in the South Seas at the time.

Gilmore, Michael T. American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.

Guillen, Matthew. "Bartleby's Preference: Res Ipsa Loquitur." Journal of the Short Story in English 37 (2001): 31-48.

Harmon, Maryhelen C. "Melville's 'borrowed personage': Bartleby and Thomas Chatterton." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 33 (First Quarter 1987): 35-44.

Hoag, Ronald Wesley. "The Corpse in the Office: The Example of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street'." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 38 (Second Quarter 1992): 119-42.

Hoffmann, Charles G. "The Shorter Fiction of Herman Melville." South Atlantic Quarterly 52 (1953): 414-30.

Hunt, Marvin. "That's the Word: Turning Tongues and Heads in 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'."ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 40 (Fourth Quarter 1994): 275-92.

Inge, M. Thomas, ed. Bartleby the Inscrutable: A Collection of Commentary on Herman Melville's Tale "Bartleby the Scrivener." Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1979. Excellent collection of essays.

Jaffe, David. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Bleak House." Hamden Court: Archon, 1979.

Kuebrich, David. "Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in 'Bartleby.'" New England Quarterly 69 (1996): 381-405.

Kotzin, Miriam N. "Putnam's Monthly and Herman Melville." Extracts: An Occasional Newsletter No. 24 (December 1975): 4-5.

Leary, Lewis. "Introduction: B Is for Bartleby." Bartleby the Inscrutable: A Collection of Commentary on Herman Melville's Tale "Bartleby the Scrivener." Ed. M. Thomas Inge. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. 13-27.

 

Levy, Leo B. "Hawthorne and the Idea of 'Bartleby.'" ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 47 (Second Quarter 1967): 66-69.

Marcus, Mordecai. "Melville's Bartleby as a Psychological Double." College English 23 (1962): 365-68.

Marx, Leo. "Melville's Parable of the Walls." Sewanee 61 (1953): 602-27.

McCall, Dan. The Silence of Bartleby. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1989. Excellent review of criticism and good interpretations of work.

Miller, Lewis H., Jr. "'Bartleby' and the Dead Letter." Studies in American Fiction 8 (1980): 1-12.

Mollinger, Robert N. "Herman Melville's 'Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.'" Psychoanalysis and Literature. New York: Nelson-Hall, 1981.

Monteiro, George. "Melville, 'Timothy Quicksand,' and the Dead-Letter Office." Studies in Short Fiction 9 (1972): 198-201.

Morgan, Winifred. "'Bartleby' and the Failure of Conventional Virtue." Renascence 45 (1993): 257-71.

Norman, Liane. "Bartleby and the Reader." New England Quarterly 44 (March 1971): 22-39. Sees that readers must separate from figure of the lawyer.

Oliver, Egbert. "A Second Look at Bartleby." College English 6 (May 1945): 431-39. Argues that B. is Thoreau.

Parker, Hershel. "Melville's Satire of Emerson and Thoreau: An Evaluation of the Evidence." American Transcendental Quarterly 7 (Summer 1970): 61-67.

Parker, Hershel. "The Sequel in 'Bartleby.'" in Bartleby the Inscrutable. 159-165.

Pribeck, Thomas. "An Assumption of Naiveté: The Tone of Melville's Lawyer." Arizona Quarterly 41 (Summer 1985): 131-42.

Rogin, Michael. Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Asserts that B. is Thoreau and "I would prefer not to" is "Civil Disobedience."

Roundy, Nancy. "'That Is All I Know of Him': Epistemology and Art in Melville's 'Bartleby.'"Essays in Arts and Sciences 9 (1980): 33-43.

Ryan, Steven T. "The Gothic Formula of 'Bartleby.'" Arizona Quarterly 34 (Winter 1978): 311-16.

Schecter, Harold. "Bartleby The Chronometer." Studies in Short Fiction 19 (Fall 1982): 359-66). Says that B. shows up our failure to live up to Christ's precepts in this time-bound world.

Sealts, Merton R., jr. Resources for Discussing Herman Melville's Tale, "Bartleby, the Scrivener."Madison: Wisconsin Humanities Committee, 1982.

Shusterman, David. "The 'Reader Fallacy' and 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" New England Quarterly 45 (1972): 118-124. Sees the narrator as smug, complacent--bad.

Springer, Norman. "Bartleby and the Terror of Limitation." PMLA 80 (1965): 410-18.

Stark, John. "Melville, Lemuel Shaw, and 'Bartleby.'" Bartleby the Inscrutable: A Collection of Commentary on Herman Melville's Tale "Bartleby the Scrivener." Ed. M. Thomas Inge. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. 166-73.

Sten, Christopher W. "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." Modern Language Quarterly 35 (March 1974): 30-44. Concludes that B. is Melville's response to reading Emerson's essay "The Transcendentalist." M. had heard E. lecture in 1849.

Sullivan, Willam P. "Bartleby and Infantile Autism: A Naturalistic Explanation." The Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 3.2 (Fall 1976): 43-60. Argues that B. suffers from autism and its "double audition" (hearing everything twice), which accounts for the long pauses in his answers and lack of eye contact.

Vann, J. Don. "Pickwick and 'Bartleby.'" Studies in American Fiction 6 (1978): 235-37.

Vincent, Howard P., ed. Melville Annual 1965, a Symposium: "Bartleby the Scrivener." Kent, Ohio: Kent State U P, 1966.

Weiner, Susan. Law in Art: Melville's Major Fiction and Nineteenth-Century American Law. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. 91-111, 178-81.

Weisbuch, Robert. "Melville's 'Bartleby' and the Dead Letter of Charles Dickens." Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British Influence in the Age of Emerson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

Wells, Daniel A. "'Bartleby the Scrivener,' Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle." Emerson Society Quarterly 21 (1975): 35-39. B. as M's friend Everett Duyckinck.

Widmer, Kingsley. "Melville's Radical Resistance: The Method and Meaning of 'Bartleby.'" Studies in the Novel 1 (1969): 444-58. Rpt. The Ways of Nihilism: A Study of Herman Melville's Short Novels. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press for California State Colleges, 1970. 91-125.

Wilson, James C. "'Bartleby': The Walls of Wall Street." Arizona Quarterly 37 (Winter 1981): 335-46. Says that lawyer reduces B. to a commodity; lawyer an unreliable narrator in a parable where oppressor and oppressed are both blind.

Wright, Nathalia. "Melville and 'Old Burton," with 'Bartleby' as an Anatomy of Melancholy." Tennessee Studies in English 15 (1970): 1-13. Sees the characters as representing the four humours: Turkey/sanguine, Nippers/choleric, Lawyer/phlegmatic, Bartleby/melancholic.


Comments to D. Campbell.