Melville's Hawthornian Bell-Tower: A Fairy-Tale Source

Abstract

IN CONSTRUCTING Bell-Tower and fashioning Talus, its mechanical man, Melville evidently culled material from a variety of sources: Spenser's description of Talus in The Faerie Queene; Pierre Bayle's discussion in his Historical and Critical Dictionary of the alleged alchemy of Albertus and Agrippa; and Mary Shelley's depiction of an overreaching scientist and his man-made creature in Frankenstein: or, The Modern Promietheus. Then too, Moby-Dick itself provided a source. For the complete briefly envisions in Ahab and the Carpenter seems vitalized in the creature of Bell-Tower, just as, in many ways, Bannadonna is a partial re-creation of Ahab. But what is especially interesting-and elusive -about the literary background of Bell-Tower is the vaguely sensed presence of Hawthorne that hovers over the tale, perhaps to its detriment. A number of critics have already noted the Hawthornian nature of Bell-Tower, yet only Egbert S. Oliver has tried to explore this facet by pointing toward a particular source, Ethan Brand.1 Although Oliver is correct in attempting to identify a specific source, the similarities he cites seem somewhat forced. I find, rather, that Bell-Tower was doubly influenced by Hawthorne's Minotaur. For not only did Hawthorne's story suggest the mechanical man of Melville's tale; it also might have inspired the writing of the tale itself. Minotaur, a retelling of the Theseus story, appeared in I853 in Tanglewood Tales, Hawthorne's second collection of Greek myths re-created for children. On January I, I854, a copy of the book