Of Figures and Letters, or the Impossible Accounting of Bartleby

Abstract

Melville’s famous tale relies on a significant number of attempts to “measure” or “fathom” what the narrator himself calls “the unaccountable Bartleby.” Paradoxically, if we accept the narrator’s inaugural statement assessing Bartleby as “an irreparable loss to literature,” how can the scrivener’s “presence” be measured in Melville’s fiction? The aim of the paper is to study the unaccountability of Bartleby from a writerly angle, mainly focusing on the use of typography and punctuation in the text (italics, inverted commas) which literally attempt to corner an irreducible presence in their signs. From the first apparition of the enigmatic scribe to the literary “advent of Bartleby” the problematic exposition of the ever-escaping figure will be studied.

Keywords

• account
• Bartleby
• fiction
• figure
• measure
• Melville