Billy Budd and Other Stories (Wordsworth Classics)

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

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.25

  Melville's short stories are masterpieces. The best are to be appreciated on more than one level and those presented here are rich with symbolism and spiritual depth. Set in 1797, Billy Budd, Foretopman exploits the tension of this period during the war between England and France to create a tale of satanic treachery, tragedy and great pathos that explores human relationships and the inherently ambiguous nature of man-made justice. Tales such as Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightning Rod Man, The Tartarus of Maids or I and My Chimney, show the timeless poetic power of Melville's writing as he consciously uses the disguise of allegory in various ways and to various ends.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.25

  If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. Billy Budd, Sailor, his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his quarrel with God. It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. Melville also explores this theme in Bartelby the Scrivener, his famous story about a Wall Street law clerk who takes passive resistance to a comic--and ultimately disastrous--extreme; and in Benito Cereno, his dazzling account of oppression and rebellion on a nineteenth-century slave ship. Completing this collection of great tales are the eerie The Encantados, the beautiful, romantic The Piazza, and Melville's chilling science fiction parable, The Bell-Tower.