Wrapping Up the Unstructured Clarel Readalong

I’m preparing this post in advance, so I suppose I run some risk of missing a late entry to the Unstructured Clarel Readalong, but let’s be real…

It’s the end of September, and that means it’s time for a wrap-up post for the Unstructured Clarel Readalong!

• My first contribution was an overview of the poem and its geography.
• I followed up with an argument for the beauty in Clarel
• I discussed some of Melville’s motifs and how closely he ties the desert to the sea
• Amateur Reader jumped in with a post on how to read the darn thing, and its sea imagery
• I claimed Mortmain for my own, though it proved a tougher choice when I thought about it
• AR tackled the wonderfully wild and the characters who Go Too Far
• I finished off on a lighter note about Clarel‘s connection to Hawthorne
• And AR wrapped up with connections of his own, to William Carlos Williams and Thomas Carlyle, and difficult books in general

A readalong for two, but an excellent one, and I thank all my readers for their interest and support. I promise more such insanity in future.