Moby Dick (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Melville, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853260088 ISBN 13: 9781853260087

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1992

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

Arguably Herman Melville's greatest work, and hailed as a classic American novel, Moby Dick tells the tale of one man's fatal obsession and his willingness to sacrifice his life and that of his crew to achieve his goal. The story follows the fortunes of Captain Ahab and the culturally and spiritually diverse crew of the Pequod, a 19th century whaling ship. The Pequod is on its last voyage out of New Bedford, Mass, in pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale which has been Ahab's obsessional quarry and bitter adversary for many years. Narrated by sole survivor Ishmael, the tale forms a complex fictional fusion, combining a wealth of literary symbolism, hidden meaning and philosophical debate with adventure narrative and a detailed historical account of the 19th century whaling trade. --Emily Lowson

Review

Responsive to the shaping forces of his age as only men of passionate imagination are, even Melville can hardly have been fully aware of how symbolical an American hero he had fashioned in Ahab. --F. O. Matthiessen

Edition details

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 1853260088
• ISBN 13: 9781853260087
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 544