“Horned Perplexities”: Melville's “Donelson” and Media Environments

Agath and the Ephemeral Text in Melville's Clarel

“…The poem “Donelson,” for example, records experiences of people getting news by wire, reading from headlines posted on bulletin boards, and rushing back for fresh reports as the news changes by the hour. Melville captures the agonizing power of telegraph messages and journalism to excite and depress readers’ spirits, shape history, and challenge more traditional forms of conveying information and telling stories (Kelley, Herman Melville 148‐49; see Zlatic and Stubbs). In other poems throughout Battle‐Pieces , Melville foregrounds the convergence and flow of multiple media forms at the sites of war: photographs, paintings, books, epitaphs and inscriptions, posters, ballads, and orations.…”

Melville's Wired World: Media, Fact, and Faith in Clarel

“…Elsewhere, I have analyzed Melville's Civil War poem “Donelson” in light of Daniel Walker Howe's claim that, given the advances in communications technology at that time, “The Age of Jacksonian Democracy” should be relabeled “The Age of Communication Revolution” (Howe 5), an era in which oral modes of thought and communication steadily eroded, reading patterns changed, and individuals increasingly relied on the visual processing of information (Zlatic, “Horned Perplexities”). The telegraph was a highly visible symbol of this revolution.…”