José-Luis Munuera’s Anti-Capitalist Graphic Novel as a Creative Response to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853) is a short story that offers a multiplicity of readings not only because of the complexity of its main characters but also because of Melville’s imaginary of Wall Street. This paper examines how José-Luis Munuera represents these narrative elements in his graphic novel adaptation Bartleby, der Schreiber (2022). I argue that Munuera’s adaptation has its own textual identity and can be read as a creative, graphic response to Melville’s criticism of nineteenth-century Wall Street. Even though set in a similar period to the 1850s original version, Munuera’s authorial choices invite the reader to reflect on contemporary conceptions of work, duty, and agency in a capitalist present.