Melville’s Christian logic …

… Ishmael’s Real Name Was Jonah | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Perhaps … we ought to take a hint from the increasingly ironic aspect to Olson’s kind of refusal and ask whether Melville’s steadily deepening use of Christian logic might more adequately explain Melville’s development as a writer. For Melville didn’t just lean toward Christian biases. Rather, he cultivated them—first by spying out the importance of sacramentality, second by developing a homemade, “desperado” theology of being that was strong enough to withstand Matthew Arnold’s kind of “Dover Beach” doubt, and, thirdly and most provocatively, by declaring de facto allegiance to Rome.