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Traces Melville's life from his childhood in New York, through his adventures abroad as a sailor, to his creation of "Moby-Dick," and forty years later, to his death, in obscurity.
Based on more than a half-century of research, Herman Melville's Whaling Years is an essential work for Melville scholars. In meticulous and thoroughly documented detail, it examines one of the most stimulating periods in the great author's life--the four years he spent aboard whaling vessels in the Pacific during the early 1840s. Melville would later draw repeatedly on these experiences in his writing, from his first successful novel, Typee, through his masterpiece Moby-Dick, to the poetry he wrote late in life. During his time in the Pacific, Melville served on three whaling ships, as well as on a U.S. Navy man-of-war. As a deserter from one whaleship, he spent four weeks among the canniba...
Deals with the persistent tension in Melville's literary and personal life that came from his desire, because of the traumatic loss of his father, to retreat into a condition of childish dependency at the same time that he felt the need to fulfill the male traditions.
The confidence-man and alchemy -- Keeping true: Billy Budd, sailor.
Traces Melville's life from his childhood in New York, through his adventures abroad as a sailor, to his creation of "Moby-Dick," and forty years later, to his death, in obscurity.
Through prodigious archival research into hundreds of family letters and diary entries, newly discovered newspaper articles, and marginalia from books that Melville owned, Parker vividly recreates the last four decades of Melville's life, episode after episode unknown to previous biographers. Illustrations.
Herman Melville's reputation as a great writer has gradually evolved throughout the 20th century. Tempered by studies that emphasize the Western literary tradition, literary appreciation for Melville's use of folklore has been slow in developing. This study focuses on Melville's immersion with and borrowing from oral traditions: both music and narrative; tall-tale humour; nautical folklore; superstition; and legend. The book also acts as a general introduction to Melville's work.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and Herman Melville (1819-1891) addressed in their writings a range of issues that continue to resonate in American culture: the reach and limits of democracy; the nature of freedom; the roles of race, gender, and sexuality; and the place of the United States in the world. Yet they are rarely discussed together, perhaps because of their differences in race and social position. Douglass escaped from slavery and tied his well-received nonfiction writing to political activism, becoming a figure of international prominence. Melville was the grandson of Revolutionary War heroes and addressed urgent issues through fiction and poetry, laboring in increasing obscurity....