Submissions

We welcome essays and notes on the life, associates, works, reputation, and influence of Herman Melville (1819–1891). Along with critical interpretation, we welcome manuscript, textual, and bibliographical analysis; digital scholarship; interviews with current writers, artists, and performers; pedagogical studies; and suggestions for special issues. Poetry and short fiction are also accepted. Articles typically range from 6000 to 7000 words; shorter pieces from 2500 to 4000 words. Contributors should submit articles, following the MLA Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, with parenthetical citations linked to a final list of “Works Cited.” 

All submissions should be made through the journal’s electronic editorial site: mc.manuscriptcentral.com/leviathan

Leviathan’s Particular Guidelines

These revised guidelines supersede earlier submission guidelines and precedents in issues of the journal before 16.3 (Oct. 2014).  

Format: In preparing your essay for submission, please follow these guidelines:

• Remove your name from your title page, running heads, footers, or any text or footnotes that might reveal your identity to our peer reviewers.

• Keep essays at no more than 7000 words (including endnotes); shorter pieces should not exceed 4000 words.

• Double-space all text, including block quotations. 

• Do not use tabs or single spacing to create block quotations, stanzas of poetry, or indentations in your Works Cited list. Instead:

  • For block quotations and stanzas, highlight the entire passage to be indented and hit the “Increase Indent” arrow in your “Format” menu bar to move the entire text to the right.

  • For multiple lines of poetry appearing in your text, insert a slash surrounded by a space between each line.

  • In your Works Cited list, please create hanging indents, instead of using tabs or single spacing to create the indentations. In Microsoft Word, you create a hanging indent by highlighting your text, then clicking on “Format,” then “Paragraph,” then, under “Special,” choosing the “Hanging” option and clicking on “OK.”  

• Dashes are created by entering two hyphen characters between the two words you want to connect. Microsoft Word will turn the hyphens into an em dash.  There is no spacing between dash and text.

• Please use one space, not two, between the period at the end of one sentence and the capital letter at the start of the next sentence.

• Submissions should be made in a Word document, not in PDF format.

Source Citation: Leviathan follows MLA’s standard bibliographical format, with sources given in a Works Cited list and citations appearing parenthetically at appropriate points in the text. Please insert your Works Cited list after the text of your essay and before the endnotes. You may wish to consult the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.) for answers to specific questions about citing sources and preparing the Works Cited list. Here are some general guidelines:

Melville Texts: Leviathan uses Northwestern-Newberry editions for Melville quotation, with the exception of the Hayford-Sealts Billy Budd. The Longman Moby-Dick and Norton Moby-Dick are also acceptable options. Quotations from Melville’s poetry should be cited by page number or line number; Clarel should be cited by book, canto and line number (for example, 2.4.56-58 or, if the reference is unclear in a given sentence, Clarel 2.4.56-58).  

Parenthetical Citations: References in the text of your essay should clearly point to specific sources in the list of works cited. If you include an author’s name or the title of a book in a sentence, you need not repeat the name or title in the parenthetical page citation that follows, provided that the reference is clear. If you do not give the author’s name or book title in the text, you need to provide it in the parenthetical reference. If you list more than one work by the same author in your Works Cited, you need to indicate which text by this author you are referring to in your parenthetical reference. For ranges of pages follow these models: 34-39 (not 34-9), 104-8 (not 104-108), and 110-34 (not 110-134).

Here are some examples of parenthetical citations:

Berthold has argued this point (178-85).

or

This point has been argued (Berthold 178-85).

or, if more than one work by Berthold is listed in the Works Cited,

Berthold has argued this point (American Risorgimento 178-85).

Parenthetical references that contain authors or short titles can be followed by subsequent references to page numbers only, unless citations to other texts intervene, in which case the author or short title should be repeated.

Here is an example:

The Navy then lacked steam power, Melville explains, so the “innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, [was] worked by muscle alone” (Billy Budd 59). Since this situation produced an insatiable demand for men, Billy is swept up by the force of an imperative that the nation itself must obey. Billy may have fast fists and an endearing spirituality, but any objection to being forced into military service “would be as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage” (45).

or, with an intervening parenthetical reference to another text,

The Navy then lacked steam power, Melville explains, so the “innumerable sails and thousands of cannon, everything in short, [was] worked by muscle alone” (Billy Budd 59). Since this situation produced an insatiable demand for men, Billy is swept up by the force of an imperative that the nation itself must obey. Historians have documented the history of naval impressment (see Wallace, Kelley, and Bryant). Billy may have fast fists and an endearing spirituality, but any objection to being forced into military service “would be as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage” (Billy Budd 45).

Works Cited List: Below please find models for most citations.

Article:
Toner, Jennifer DiLalla. “The Accustomed Signs of the Family: Rereading
Genealogy in Melville’s Pierre.” American Literature 70 (1998): 237-63.

Book:
Dillingham, William B. Melville’s Later Novels. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986. 

Edition:

Bird, Robert Montgomery. Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Ed.
Christopher Looby. New York: NYRB Classics, 2008.

Chapter in Book: 

Rampersad, Arnold. “Shadow and Veil: Melville and Modern Black
Consciousness.” In Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Ed.
John Bryant and Robert Milder. Kent, Ohio: Kent State UP, 1997. 162-77.

Works by Melville:

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Ed. Harrison Hayford,
Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston and Chicago:
Northwestern UP and The Newberry Library, 1988.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Ed. John Bryant
and Haskell Springer. New York: Longman, 2006.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor. Ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton
M. Sealts Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. 

Web Sources:  URLs are no longer required, unless readers would not be able to find the site without one. Give only author(s), title of site in italics, site publisher (if available), date of publication (if available), the designation “Web,” and access date.

Olsen-Smith, Steven. “Introduction.” Melville’s Marginalia Online. Boise State U. 2006. Web. 6 May 2008.