“Sleepy Hollow in Concord” in NEQ

My article, “Sleepy Hollow in Concord: Melville’s Gothic Parody of Transcendentalist Spirit in ‘The Apple-Tree Table'” appears in the current issue of The New England Quarterly. 

From the NEQ site: “Inspired by Concord’s newly consecrated Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Herman Melville’s “The Apple-Tree Table; or, Original Spiritual Manifestations” (1856) undercuts spirituality with materiality in a gothic parody that is both a literal parody of the “Sleepy Hollow” genre and an ironic parody of both Thoreau and Hawthorne.” 

If you have not read ‘The Apple-Tree Table,’ I recommend that you do. There’s a lot of humor in it, but with a more playful and endearing quality that is not typically found in Melville’s short stories. Most readings of the story have been quick to label it a satire of Thoreau or spiritualism–and they wouldn’t be wrong. The question I ask is, why on earth is Melville writing a gothic parody? And what is with all the allusions to Concord? There’s also an egregious amount of references to “spirits” and trees–living and dead.

You can read the article here.