The Moby-Dick Hyphen

From the 1906 edition.

While reading Moby-Dick late last year, I became interested in why the title Moby-Dick is hyphenated and yet Melville does not hyphenate the name of the whale in the actual text. The name is used a total of 84 times throughout the novel counting the title. I decided to ask both Claude.ai and ChatGPT 3.5 why this is so in exactly the same question. Their differing answers and even the formatting of their answers makes for an interesting comparison between the two AI Chatbots.

Keith: Why does Moby-Dick have a hyphen in its title and yet throughout the actual text of the novel Melville writes it as "Moby Dick" - without a hyphen?

Claude: There are a few possible reasons why Moby-Dick has a hyphen in the title but not consistently throughout the text:

• It was a common convention at the time (the 1850s) to use hyphens in book titles, but not necessarily within the text itself. So Melville may have chosen to hyphenate it in the title to follow publishing norms.

• The hyphen in the title helps distinguish it as a distinctive, named entity - "Moby-Dick" refers specifically to the white whale that Captain Ahab is hunting. Removing the hyphen in the text allows Melville to sometimes just use "Moby Dick" in a descriptive sense.

• There are in fact some instances in the novel where Melville does hyphenate "Moby-Dick" in the text, though not consistently. The inconsistency could simply reflect the evolving conventions around punctuation and hyphenation at the time.

• Melville himself was inconsistent in his spelling and hyphenation of the whale's name in early drafts and correspondence. He may have ultimately chosen the hyphenated "Moby-Dick" for the title for consistency, but retained the flexibility of spelling it either way in the text.

• The publisher or editors may have decided to standardize the spelling and hyphenation in the title, but were less prescriptive about hyphen use in the actual body text.

So in short, the hyphen in the title but not always in the text likely reflects publishing conventions of the era as well as Melville's own inconsistent spellings. The hyphen helps mark it as a proper name in the title, but Melville exercised poetic license in spelling it flexibly within the work.

ChatGPT: The inconsistency in the title formatting of "Moby-Dick" with a hyphen and "Moby Dick" without a hyphen can be attributed to the variations in publishing practices during the 19th century when Herman Melville's novel was first published. The title page of the original 1851 edition included the hyphen, but within the text of the novel, both versions were used interchangeably.

The reasons for such variations could include typographical decisions by the printer, editorial choices, or simply the evolving conventions of the time. In modern editions, both versions with and without the hyphen are accepted, and the choice often depends on the publisher's preference. The inconsistency in the title's presentation has become a notable aspect of the book's history and is sometimes discussed in literary analysis.

Keith: Is there any scholarship on this inconsistency?

Claude: Yes, there has been some scholarly analysis and commentary on the inconsistent hyphenation of "Moby-Dick" between the title and the text:

• A number of scholars have noted that Melville himself was inconsistent in his spellings and hyphenation of the whale's name in early drafts, letters, and manuscripts. He seemed to vacillate between "Moby Dick" and "Moby-Dick" over time.

• Literary scholar Harrison Hayford, in his seminal edition of Moby-Dick, notes that Melville had originally used "Moby Dick" in the novel but his publisher encouraged him to standardize the hyphenated spelling for the title.

• Scholar Mary K. Bercaw Edwards has commented that the hyphenation in the title reflects mid-19th century publishing conventions, while Melville exercised "characteristic authorial unorthodoxy" in his spellings within the text itself.

• Some see the hyphenated title as giving the whale's name more gravitas as a distinctive proper name, whereas the non-hyphenated text spelling conveys more fluidity and symbolism.

• A few scholars think Melville purposefully used the spellings differently to distinguish descriptive versus proper name references to the whale. But there's no definitive evidence this was intentional.

• Overall, most academics attribute the inconsistency more to evolving conventions and Melville's own variable spellings, rather than any deliberate choice per se.

So in summary, while there has been some scholarly examination of this issue, there is no consensus it was a purposeful authorial decision - but rather a reflection of fluid language conventions and spelling variability in Melville's era. The title/text divergence has become an accepted eccentricity.

ChatGPT: Yes, scholars and literary critics have explored the inconsistency in the title formatting of "Moby-Dick." While it may not be the primary focus of academic works, discussions about the variations in the title have been included in broader analyses of the novel and Herman Melville's works. Some scholars have delved into the historical context of publishing practices in the 19th century and examined how such variations might reflect the author's intentions, the editorial process, or the printing industry of that time.

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, you may want to look into literary analyses and scholarly articles on Herman Melville's works, particularly those that discuss "Moby-Dick." Journals, academic books, and dissertations on Melville's writing and the publishing history of his works could provide insights into the discussions surrounding the inconsistency in the title formatting.

(Since Claude offered examples in its answer I had to actually ask ChatGPT to give me some examples of the scholarship.)

ChatGPT: I don't have real-time access to specific examples of scholarship, as my training only includes knowledge up to January 2022, and I don't have the ability to browse the internet for updates. However, I can suggest that you explore academic databases, libraries, and scholarly journals for articles and analyses on Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." Some academic journals that focus on literature, such as the "Nathaniel Hawthorne Review," "Melville Society Extracts," or "The Yearbook of English Studies," may have articles discussing aspects of Melville's works, including variations in the title.

University libraries, online databases like JSTOR, and academic bookstores can be valuable resources for finding scholarly works on this topic. Keywords like "Moby-Dick title variation" or "Herman Melville publishing history" could be helpful in your search. Remember to check the publication date of the sources to ensure that you are getting the most up-to-date and relevant information.

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I don't trust everything these chatbots tell me. It has been my experience that discussing literature in detail with any AI chatbot invariably leads to “hallucinations.” Their accounts are not reliable. So, I looked elsewhere online for answers.

This link offers what seems to me to be a more exact reason for the difference. According to this source...

“The title of the English edition, The Whale, was Melville’s earlier title for the book. In an undated letter to Bentley, Allan Melville wrote, “Since sending proofs of my brothers new work . . . he has determined upon a new title & dedication — Enclosed you have proof of both­ — It is thought here that the new title will be a better selling title –“. Allan’s letter arrived in time for Bentley to include the dedication to Hawthorne; but  presumably it was already too late to change the tide, which appears twice in each of the three volumes and had been used in advertising. In his letter Allan spells “Moby-Dick” with the hyphen, as it also appears on the title page and divisional title page of the American edition; but only one of the many occurrences of the name in the text includes the hyphen. The Northwestern-Newberry editors retain the hyphen in the tide, arguing that hyphenated titles were conventional in mid-nineteenth-century America. As a result, the hyphenated form refers to the book, the unhyphenated to the whale.”

According to another dependable source, The Paris Review, from 2014:

“Melville must’ve been an intimate of punctuation anxiety; Moby-Dick has a hyphen that seems to disappear and reappear at will. Where did it come from? What does it mean? Did he intend to put it there at all? “Thomas Tanselle writes that Melville’s brother, Allan, made a last-minute change to the title of the American edition. ‘[Melville] has determined upon a new title,’ his brother wrote. ‘It is thought here that the new title will be a better selling title … Moby-Dick is a legitimate title for the book.’ The American edition went to press, hyphen intact, despite the fact that the whale within was only referred to with a hyphen one time … It’s still unclear whether Melville, who didn’t use a hyphen inside the book, chose a hyphen for the book’s title or whether his brother punctuated the title incorrectly. Whether you chalk it up to typographical error, long-obsolete custom or authorial intention, the hunt for the true story behind Moby-Dick’s hyphen continues.”

Smithsonian Magazine confirms this in an article from 2015. It turns out that the “some instances” referred to by Claude of where the hyphen is used in the text is actually only one instance, found Chapter 133 where the whale is referred to in a hyphenated form. I checked this in my paperback edition and found the exact sentence but it is rendered “Moby Dick.” No hyphen. Only the earliest editions have this type-setting mistake (which is pictured above). A hyphen was erroneously place on page 609 of an old edition. So, for the sake of “a better selling title” there is a hyphen in the title (only) of Moby-Dick. Why didn't ChatGPT or Claude just tell me that? I have to agree with his brother that Melville's initial, unimaginative title, The Whale, failed to measure up to the majesty of his achievement.