Herman Melville's Typee (1846), describing his experience in the South Seas, was published as a work of authentic travel writing. Travel writing in the early nineteenth century could provide "American readers with voyeuristic 'peeps' into foreign lands unrestricted by American social and sexual codes" "under the guise of scientific observation" and be regarded as "a possible Victorian form of genteel pornography." My supposition is that Melville provides a homoerotic gaze on the male body under the disguise of travel writing; he identifies the gaze with that of a bachelor; and he refuses/re...