- The Oxford Handbook of Jack London
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Life on the Pacific Rim: The Ideology of The Overland Monthly
- The Facts of Life and Literature
- Family, Friends, Mentors
- Jack London, Marriage, and Divorce
- “Never Had Much Difficulty”: Jack London, George Brett, and the Macmillan Company
- Jack London’s International Reputation
- “The Feels”: Jack London and the New Mass Cultural Public Sphere
- Jack London, War, and the Journalism that Acts
- “In the Thick of It”: The (Meta)Discourse of Jack London’s Russo-Japanese War Correspondence
- “Come Down from the Mountain Top and Join the Fray”: Jack London’s Role in the Mexican Revolution
- The Essays, Articles, and Lectures of Jack London
- Jack London as Playwright
- Jack London as Poet
- The Atavistic Nightmare: Memory and Recapitulation in Jack London’s Ghost and Fantasy Stories
- Darwin’s Anachronisms: Liberalism and Conservative Temporality in The Son of the Wolf
- The People of the Abyss: Tensions and Tenements in the Capital of Poverty
- Canine Narration
- Making Sense of Jack London’s Confusion of Genres in <i>The Sea-Wolf</i>
- <i>The Iron Heel</i> and the Contemporary Bourgeois Novel
- “Mix According to Formula”: Martin Eden and the Question of Genre
- Burning Daylight
- Jack London’s Sci-Fi Finale
- The Valley of the Moon: Quest for Love, Land, and a Home
- “A Curious Sort of Book”: Jack London’s The Star Rover and the Politics of Prison Reform
- Cherry, Unfinished Business: Race, Class, and the American Empire
- Sex and Science in Jack London’s America
- From Atavistic Gutter-Wolves to Anglo-Saxon Wolf: Evolution and Technology in Jack London’s Urban Industrial Modernity
- A Bestiary from the Age of Jack London
- “The Ragged Edge of Nonentity”: Jack London and the Transformation of the Tramp, 1878–1907
- Jack London and Physical Culture
- The Sovereign Logic of Jack London’s Sea Stories
- “See Things in New Ways”: Jack London, Socialism, and the Conversionary Model of Politics
- Jack London, Suffering, and the Ideal of Masculine Toughness
- Women’s Rights, Women’s Lives
- Blurred Lines: The Illustration of Jack London
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
I discuss the philosophical significance of the generic confusions in Jack London’s novel The Sea-Wolf (1904). Drawing on a generous array of genres and scenarios, London asks his prospective reader to try and make sense of this complexity, either as “the superficial reader” of the sea romance or as “the deeper reader,” who is promised “the bigger thing lying underneath.” But what exactly is that bigger thing, the philosophical message, hidden by the generic complexity of the narrative, which will eventually necessitate a kind of deus-ex-machina authorial intervention when the sea romance is jeopardized by the demonic superman (and rapist) Wolf Larsen. By way of conclusion, I discuss the existential dilemma that London faced in The Sea-Wolf and in most of his work its philosophical formula articulated in Jules de Gaultier’s bovarysme and the war against reality, the Medusa-Truth.
Keywords: Nietzsche, naturalism, genre, bovarysme, Wolf Larsen
Per Serritslev Petersen is Professor Emeritus at Aarhus University. He has published widely within British and American studies, literary and cultural theory, as well as on individual authors, notably Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Tennyson, D. H. Lawrence, Tom Stoppard, Melville, Emily Dickinson, Jack London, Don DeLillo, and Bret Easton Ellis.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Oxford Handbook of Jack London
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Life on the Pacific Rim: The Ideology of The Overland Monthly
- The Facts of Life and Literature
- Family, Friends, Mentors
- Jack London, Marriage, and Divorce
- “Never Had Much Difficulty”: Jack London, George Brett, and the Macmillan Company
- Jack London’s International Reputation
- “The Feels”: Jack London and the New Mass Cultural Public Sphere
- Jack London, War, and the Journalism that Acts
- “In the Thick of It”: The (Meta)Discourse of Jack London’s Russo-Japanese War Correspondence
- “Come Down from the Mountain Top and Join the Fray”: Jack London’s Role in the Mexican Revolution
- The Essays, Articles, and Lectures of Jack London
- Jack London as Playwright
- Jack London as Poet
- The Atavistic Nightmare: Memory and Recapitulation in Jack London’s Ghost and Fantasy Stories
- Darwin’s Anachronisms: Liberalism and Conservative Temporality in The Son of the Wolf
- The People of the Abyss: Tensions and Tenements in the Capital of Poverty
- Canine Narration
- Making Sense of Jack London’s Confusion of Genres in <i>The Sea-Wolf</i>
- <i>The Iron Heel</i> and the Contemporary Bourgeois Novel
- “Mix According to Formula”: Martin Eden and the Question of Genre
- Burning Daylight
- Jack London’s Sci-Fi Finale
- The Valley of the Moon: Quest for Love, Land, and a Home
- “A Curious Sort of Book”: Jack London’s The Star Rover and the Politics of Prison Reform
- Cherry, Unfinished Business: Race, Class, and the American Empire
- Sex and Science in Jack London’s America
- From Atavistic Gutter-Wolves to Anglo-Saxon Wolf: Evolution and Technology in Jack London’s Urban Industrial Modernity
- A Bestiary from the Age of Jack London
- “The Ragged Edge of Nonentity”: Jack London and the Transformation of the Tramp, 1878–1907
- Jack London and Physical Culture
- The Sovereign Logic of Jack London’s Sea Stories
- “See Things in New Ways”: Jack London, Socialism, and the Conversionary Model of Politics
- Jack London, Suffering, and the Ideal of Masculine Toughness
- Women’s Rights, Women’s Lives
- Blurred Lines: The Illustration of Jack London
- Index
