"If ever this dreadful incubus of a book Clarel] (I call it so because it has undermined all our happiness) gets off Herman's shoulders I do hope he may be in better mental health--but at present I have reason to feel the gravest concern & anxiety about it--to put it in mild phrase."--Letter from Elizabeth Melville to Catherine Gansevoort, 1876 Clarel, an 18,000-line poem, is one of the longest examples of the "faith-doubt" genre that arose in Victorian times and one that has largely been ignored by Melville critics. Author William Potter argues that Melville's poem Clarel is actually a...