Chasing the White Whale of Literary Blogging

flickr - Skelly B (creative commons licensed)

So ignorant are most landsmen . . . they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. --Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 45, "The Affidavit."

With apologies to Melville, I'm indeed going to use his famous tale (and whale) allegorically to investigate the topic of literary blogging. I've chosen a rather benign looking white whale in the picture here. His home is an aquarium, and he looks like the sort of sea creature that would roll over to let you pat his tummy. And maybe that's what I want literary blogging to be -- a tame creature, like this one, that can both delight and educate visitors.

But after piloting three courses in which I have had students blog, I've learned that the new media -- of which blogging is merely one well-known species -- is certainly not tame. The new media is a set of cultural and technical practices that are engaging, yet evasive -- like a certain whale from a certain novel.