The Cambridge Introduction to Herman Melville

Első borító
Cambridge University Press, 2007. márc. 8. - 140 oldal
Despite its indifferent reception when it was first published in 1851, Moby Dick is now a central work in the American literary canon. This introduction offers readings of Melville's masterpiece, but it also sets out the key themes, contexts, and critical reception of his entire oeuvre. The first chapters cover Melville's life and the historical and cultural contexts. Melville's individual works each receive full attention in the third chapter, including Typee, Moby Dick, Billy Budd and the short stories. Elsewhere in the chapter different themes in Melville are explained with reference to several works: Melville's writing process, Melville as letter writer, Melville and the past, Melville and modernity, Melville's late writings. The final chapter analyses Melville scholarship from his day to ours. Kevin J. Hayes provides comprehensive information about Melville's life and works in an accessible and engaging book that will be essential for students beginning to read this important author.

Részletek a könyvből

Kiválasztott oldalak

Tartalomjegyzék

1. rész -
12
2. rész -
16
3. rész -
23
4. rész -
25
5. rész -
27
6. rész -
33
7. rész -
74
8. rész -
81
9. rész -
112

Más kiadások - Összes megtekintése

Gyakori szavak és kifejezések

Népszerű szakaszok

53. oldal - All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
54. oldal - All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought, all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
52. oldal - Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And.
72. oldal - ... the man who, like Russia or the British Empire, declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself) amid the powers of heaven, hell, and earth.
60. oldal - And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces.
87. oldal - Hanging from the beam, Slowly swaying (such the law), Gaunt the shadow on your green, Shenandoah ! The cut is on the crown (Lo, John Brown), And the stabs shall heal no more. Hidden in the cap Is the anguish none can draw : So your future veils its face, Shenandoah ! But the streaming beard is shown (Weird John Brown), The meteor of the war.
68. oldal - I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if he dont attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will.
19. oldal - And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life ; and this is the key to it all.

A szerzőről (2007)

Kevin J. Hayes is Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma.

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