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So, "call me Ishmael."
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Okay. Absolutely.
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Marilynne Robinson, as is going to emerge in my lecture today,
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is very much preoccupied with the nineteenth century.
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She is very interested, especially,
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in these classic American writers of the American transcendentalist school--
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and that's Melville, Hawthorne, Emerson,Thoreau--
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also very interested in Dickinson, Emily Dickinson.
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She has a sensibility that maps very closely with theirs,
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and I'll get into that towards the end of my lecture today.
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But, just as a narrative strategy,
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how is "Call me Ishmael" different from "My name is Ruth"?