Moby Dick

by David Herd (Introduction), David Herd (Introduction), Dr Keith Carabine (Series Editor), Herman Melville (Author)

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  paperback
  

  $8.29

  With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of 'Poetry Review'. Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his 'mighty theme' - not only the whale but all things sublime - Melville breathes in the world's great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $14.92

  A section of Whaling and Whalecraft features prose and graphics by John B. Putnam, a sample of contemporary whaling engravings, as well as, new to this edition, an engraving of Tupai Cupa, the real-life inspiration for the character of Queequeg. Evoking Melville's fascination with the fluidity of categories like savagery and civilization, the image of Tupai Cupa fittingly introduces Before Moby-Dick: International Controversy over Melville, a new section that documents the ferocity of religions, political, and sexual hostility toward Melville in reaction to his early books, beginning with Typee in 1846. The image of Tupai Cupa also evokes Melville's interest in the mystery of self-identity and the possibility of knowing another person's queenly personality (Chapter 119). That theme (focused on Melville, Ishmael, and Ahab) is pursued in A Handful of Critical Challenges, from Walter E. Bezanson's classic centennial study through Harrison Hayford's meditation on Loomings and recent essays by Camille Paglia and John Wenke. In Reviews and Letters by Melville, a letter has been redated and a wealth of new biographical material has been added to the footnotes, notably to Melville's Hawthorne and His Mosses. Analogues and Sources retains classic pieces by J. N. Reynolds and Owen Chase, as well as new findings by Geoffrey Sanborn and Steven Olsen-Smith. In Reviews of Moby-Dick emphasizes the ongoing religious hostility toward Melville and highlights new discoveries, such as the first-known Scottish review of The Whale. Posthumous Praise and the Melville Revival: 1893-1927 collects belated, enthusiastic praise up through that of William Faulkner. Biographical Cross-Light is Hershel Parker's somber look at what writing Moby-Dick cost Melville and his family. From Foreword through Selected Bibliography, this Sesquicentennial Norton Critical Edition is uniquely valuable as the most up-to-date and comprehensive documentary source for study of Moby-Dick.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $8.15

• New

  Hardcover
  1991

  $18.36

  A story of the war between man and mammal, in which the author explores his obsessions with good and evil, love and solitude, speech and silence, using his technical knowledge of sailing and the sea to tell a story which is at once minutely realistic and powerfully symbolic.