"moby Dick" Defamiliarization Interpretation

Herman Melville, the 19th century American novelist, essayist and poet, is considered as the most outstanding representative of American Romanticism succeeding Nathaniel Hawthorne. His masterpiece Moby Dick is the classic works of marine literature. In different perspectives, the novel reflects various meanings. Its richness in knowledge about the marine and the whale and its vivid description of the plot of the story exert a great impact on the readers, unfolding a magnificent and an unknown world before them.In 1914 the famous theory of defamiliarization was proposed by the representative of the Russian formalism Victor Shklovsky in his guideline declaration The Reveberation of the Word, which emphasizes the literariness and the artistry of the literary works and has aroused worldwide attention.Aiming at exploring the literary charm and the spiritual essence of this novel, this thesis attempts to make a thorough analysis of Moby Dick, from the perspectives of theme, narrative point of view, character, image and rhetorical devices, by dint of studying the application of the theory of defamiliarization in the creation of this novel and analyzing the attainment of the desirable result of origin and uncommonness which endows the readers with an entirely new art evaluation experience and unprecedented inner feel. In the hope of bringing available experience for the art works criticism of the same kind or the like, the writer of this thesis makes such a brave try.