Menetekel

Name: Menetekel
Price: 324.75 AUD
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The Black Whale and the Semiotics of Doom

By: Todd Tyner Cronkhite

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Hardcover | 15 October 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Hardcover

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2

Hardcover

RRP $326.00

$324.75

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Available: 15th October 2026

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Menetekel: The Black Whale and the Semiotics of Doom explores a literary and cultural phenomenon known as menetekelâ"a sign or warning of impending disasterâ"using Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, as a guide to understanding how such signs are read, interpreted, and contested. While Moby-Dick provides the interpretive framework, the book's focus extends far beyond Melville's novel to develop a broader theory of semiotic doom.

Combining literary criticism, semiotics, cultural theory, and critical geography, the book traces a cartography of âwriting on the wallâ in North America, from the Pawnee Buttes of northeastern Colorado to the underground diary of the graffiti artist REVS in the New York City subway. Drawing on Herman Melville, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Fredric Jameson, and others, it develops a theory of menetekel and applies it to two distinct manifestations of writing âon the wall.â The book argues that menetekel is a sign that contains the conditions of its own destruction and derives its meaning from the surface on which it is written. By recasting Ishmael as a literary critic and theorist of interpretation, it offers a new methodology for reading signs, landscapes, monuments, graffiti, and other cultural inscriptions.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of literary studies, semiotics, cultural studies, American studies, geography, and media studies.

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