MAKING ONESELF RECEPTIVE VIA HERMENEUTICS, EXEGESIS, TYPOLOGY, AND MIDRASH IN INTERPRETING THE BIBLE AND AMERICAN LITERATURE (A CASE STUDY ON THE MAJOR WORKS OF HERMAN MELVILLE)

Hermeneutics and interpretation go hand in hand with the Bible, but especially with the fashion in which literary criticism developed, the latter having been influenced by Biblical criticism since earliest times. Furthermore, every type of literary interpretation is rooted in Biblical exegesis, and this is also the case for the nineteenth-century American literature where the novelists are the ones to show the Bible’s influence, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” being a famous case in point.