| Top | Primary Works

Typee, 1846; Omoo, 1847; Mardi, 1849; Redburn, 1849; White-Jacket, 1850; Moby-Dick, 1851; Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, 1852; "Bartleby, the Scrivner," 1853; "Benito Cereno," 1855; Israel Porter, 1855; The Piazza Tales, 1856; The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, 1857; Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, 1866; Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, 1876; John Marr and Other Sailors, 1888; Timoleon, 1891; Billy Budd, Sailor, 1924.

In CSUS Library: The Northwestern-Newberry Series

The writings of Herman Melville. Editors: Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern UP, 1968- . PS2380 .F68

Typee, a peep at Polynesian life. 1968. PS2380 .F68 v.1

Omoo; a narrative of adventures in the South Seas. 1968. PS2380 .F68 v.2

Mardi and a voyage thither. 1970. PS2380 .F68 v.3

Redburn, his first voyage; being the sailor-boy confessions and reminiscences of the son-of-a-gentleman, in the merchant service. 1969. PS2380 .F68 v.4

White-jacket; or, The world in a man-of-war. 1970. PS2380 .F68 v.5

Moby-Dick, or, The whale. 1988. PS2380 .F68 v.6

Pierre; or, The ambiguities. 1971. PS2380 .F68 v.7

Israel Potter, his fifty years of exile. 1982. PS2380 .F68 v.8

The piazza tales, and other prose pieces, 1839-1860. 1987. PS2380 .F68 v.9

The confidence-man : his masquerade. 1984. PS2380 .F68 v.10

Volume 11: Will be on HM's Published Poems, other than Clarel. publication date unknown.

Clarel: a poem and pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 1991. PS2380 .F68 v.12

Correspondence. 1993. PS2380 .F68 v.14

Journals. 1989. PS2380 .F68 v.15

 

| Top | Selected Bibliography:

Anderson, Charles R. Melville in the South Seas. NY: Dover Publications, 1966. PS2386 .A6

Arvin, Newton. Herman Melville. NY: Sloane, 1950. PS2386 .A7

Hayford, Harrison. Melville's 'Monody': Really for Hawthorne?; A Keepsake to Celebrate Publication of Clarel in The Writings of Herman Melville. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1990.

Horth, Lynn. Correspondence/Herman Melville; Northwestern-Newberry Ed. Chicago: Northwestern UP, 1993.

Howard, Leon. Herman Melville, a biography. Berkeley: U of California P, 1951. PS2386 .H6

Kirby, David. Herman Melville. NY: Continuum, 1993.

Leyda, Jay. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of HM: 1819-1891. 2 vols. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1951; reprinted with a supplement NY: Gordian P, 1969.

Miller, Edwin H. Melville. NY: G. Braziller, 1975. PS2386 M49

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography: 1819-1851. Vol. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. PS2386 .P37

- - -. Herman Melville: A Biography: 1851-1891. Vol. 2. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.

Robertson-Lorant, Laurie. Melville: a biography. NY: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1996. PS2386 .R635

Sealts, Merton M. The early lives of Melville. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1974. PS2386 S38

- - -. Melville's reading; a check-list of books owned and borrowed. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1966. PS2386 .S42

Wallace, Robert K. Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1992.

Young, Philip. The Private Melville. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993.

Abel, Darrel. Ruined Eden of the Present: Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe: Critical Essays in Honor of Darrel Abel. eds. G.R. Thompson and Virgil Lokke. W. Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1981. PS374.F26 R8

Adamson, Joseph. Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye: A Psychoanalytic Reading. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1997.

Adler, Joyce. War in Melville's Imagination. NY: NY UP, 1981. PS2387 B66

Ahearn, Edward J. Marx and Modern Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989. PS374 .S7 A37

Bercaw, Mary K. Melville's Sources. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1987.

Bickley, R. Bruce. The Method of Melville's Short Fiction. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1975. PS2388 T4 B5

Bredahl, Axel Carl. Melville's Angles of Vision. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 1972. PS2387 B68

Brodhead, Richard H. Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976. PS1888 B7

Bryant, John. Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance. NY: Oxford UP, 1993.

- - -, and Robert Milder. eds. Melville's Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Kent, Ohio: Kent State UP, 1997.

Cameron, Sharon. The Corporeal Self: Allegories of the Body in Melville and Hawthorne. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. PS374 B64 C3

Cave, Alfred. The Pequot War. Amherst: U of Massachussetts P, 1996. (possible name source for the Pequod)

Davis, Clark. After the Whale: Melville in the Wake of Moby-Dick. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1995. xiii, 230 pp.

Dillingham, William B. Melville's Short Fiction, 1853-1856. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1977. PS2387 .D53

Duban, James. Melville's Major Fiction: Politics, Theology, and Imagination. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1983. PS2387 .D8

Durer, Christopher S. Herman Melville, Romantic and Prophet: A Study of His Romantic Sensibility and His Relationship to European Romantics. Toronto: York P, 1996.

Edinger, Edward F. Melville's Moby-Dick: A Jungian Commentary. NY: New Directions Books, 1978.

Gale, Robert L. A Herman Melville Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. ISBN 0-313-29011-3.

---. Plots and Characters in the Fiction and Narrative Poetry of Herman Melville. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969. PS2387 .G3

Garner, Stanton. The Civil War World of Herman Melville. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 1993.

Greenberg, Robert M. Splintered Worlds: Fragmentation and the Ideal of Diversity in the Work of Emerson, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1993.

Grejda, Edward S. The Common Continent of Men: Racial Equality in the Writings of Herman Melville. Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat P, 1974. PS2388.R3 G7

Haberstroh, Charles, Melville and male identity. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1980. PS2386 .H3

Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker. eds. Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Jehlen, Myra. ed. Herman Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Kelley, Wyn. Melville's City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York. NY: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Kier, Kathleen. The Melville Encyclopedia: The Novels. Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Co., 1994.

| Top | Kramer, Aaron. Melville's Poetry: Toward the Enlarged Heart; a Thematic Study of Three Ignored Major Poems. Rutherford, Fairleigh Dickinson UP: 1972. PS2382 K7

Kring, Walter D. Herman Melville's Religious Journey. Raleigh, NC: Pentland P, 1997.

Levine, Robert s. ed. The Cambridge Companion to HM. NY: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Martin, Robert K. Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. PS2388 .F74 M3

Miller, Perry. The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville, and the New York Literary Scene. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Newman, Lea B. V. A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Herman Melville. Boston: Hall, 1986. PS2387 .N5

Obenzinger, Hilton. American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999.

Otter, Samurl. Melville's Anatomies. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999.

Pahl, Dennis. Architects of the Abyss: The Indeterminate Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1989. PS377 .P34

Parker, Hershel, ed. The Recognition of Herman Melville: Selected Criticism since 1846. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1967. PS2387 .P3

Post-Lauria, Sheila. Correspondent Colorings: Melville and the Marketplace. Boston: U of Mass. P, 1996.

Renker, Elizabeth. Strike through the Mask: HM and the Scene of Writing. Hampden Station, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. ISBN 0-8018-5230-7.

Robillard, Douglas. Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint. Kent: Kent SU P, 1997.

Rogin, Michael P. Subversive Genealogy. NY: Knopf, 1983.

Sanborn, Geoffrey. The Sign of the Cannibal: Melville and the Making of a Postcolonial Reader. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1998.

Sherrill, Rowland A. The Prophetic Melville: Experience, Transcendence, and Tragedy. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1979. PS2387 .S48

Smith, Richard D., and Benjamin F. Fisher. eds. Melville's Complaint: Doctors and Medicine in the Art of Herman Melville. NY: Garland, 1991.

Solomon, Pearl C. Dickens and Melville in their time. NY: Columbia UP, 1975.

Springer, Haskell. ed. America and the Sea: A Literary History. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995.

Sten, Christopher. The Weaver-God, He Weaves: Melville and the Poetics of the Novel. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1996.

- - -. ed. Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1991.

Thompson, Lawrance R. Melville's Quarrel with God. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. PS2388.B5 W7

Wright, Nathalia. Melville's Use of the Bible. With a new appendix by the author. NY: Octagon Books, 1969. PS2388.B5 W7

Zoellner, Robert. The Salt-Sea Mastodon; a Reading of Moby-Dick. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973. PS2384 M62 Z6

Barnett, Louise K. "`Truth is Voiceless': Speech and Silence in Melville's `Piazza Tales.'" Papers on Language & Literature 25.1 (Wntr 1989): 59(8).

DiLalla-Toner, Jennifer. "The Accustomed Signs of the Family: Rereading Genealogy in Melville's Pierre." American literature 70.2 (Jun 1998): 237-265.

Herzog, Kristin. "Melville" in Women, Ethics, and Exotics: Images of Power in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1983. PS374 .W6 H45

Hiltner, Judith. "Disquieting Encounters: Male Intrusions/Female Realms in Melville." Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 40.2 (1994): 91-113.

Husni, Khalil. "The Metaphysics of Light, Colors, and Darkness in Melville's Pierre: Narrator Versus Hero." Cla journal 39.4 (Jun 1996): 468-489.

Kearns, Michael. "The Material Melville: Shaping Readers' Horizons," in Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles, eds. Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America. UMass Press, 1997.

McCarthy, Paul. "The Extraordinary Man as Idealist in Novels by Hawthorne and Melville." Emerson Society Q. 54 (1969): 43-51.

Melville Society Extracts 110 (Sept 1997):

Cahir, Linda C. "Routinizing the Charismatic: Melville and Hollywood's Three Moby-Dicks." 11-17.

Djelal, Juana C. "Melville's Apostrophe: Rhetorical Conventions of the Connubium." 1-5.

Petrulionis, Sandra H. "Re-reading "'Bachelors and Maids': Melville as Feminist?" 1, 5-10.

Obuchowski, Peter A. "Melville's Pierre: Plinlimmon as a Satrist Satirized." Cla journal 39.4 (Jun 1996): 489-.

Olsen-Smith, Steven. "The Pattern of the Impulsive Act in Melville's Fiction." Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 42.3 (1996): 195-215.

Pollin, Burton R. "Traces of Poe in Melville." Melville Society Extracts 109(June 1997): 2-12.

Ra'ad, Basem L. "`The Encantadas' and `The Isle of the Cross': Melvillean Dubieties, 1853-54." American Literature 63.2 (Jun 1991): ,316(8).

Scheidau, Herbert N., and Homer B. Pettey. "Melville's Ithyphallic God." Studies in american fiction 26.2 (Fall 1998): 193-213.

Taylor, Mary A. "More Evidence of H.M. Tomlinson's Role in the Melville revival." Studies in American Fiction 20.1 (Sprg 1992): 111(3).

| Top | Melville and Transcendentalism

Adams, Michael V. "Whaling and Difference: Moby-Dick Deconstructed." New Orleans Review 10.4 (Wint 1983): 59-64.

Blansett, Barbara. "Melville and Emersonian Transcendentalism." Dissertation Abstracts 24 (1964): 2904.

Bluestein, Gene. "Ahab's Sin." Arizona Quarterly 41.2 (Sumr 1985): 101-116.

Duban, James. "'This "All" Feeling': Melville, Norton, and Schleiermacher." English Language Notes 23.4 (Jun 1986): 38-42.

Higgins, Brian. "Herman Melville." The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and Criticism. Ed. Joel Myerson. NY: Mod. Lang. Assn. of America, 1984. 348-361.

Hoffman, Michael J. "The Anti-Transcendentalism of Moby-Dick." Georgia Review 23 (1969): 3-16.

Kronick, Joseph. "Emerson and the Question of Reading/Writing." Genre 14.3 (Fall 1981): 363-381.

Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. London: Oxford UP, 1941. PS201 .M3

Rosenblum, Joseph. "A Cock Fight between Melville and Thoreau." Studies in Short Fiction 23.2 (Sprg 1986): 159-167.

Saunders, Brian. "Melville's Sea Change: From Irving to Emerson." Studies in the Novel 20.4 (Wint 1988): 374-388.

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Pursuing Melville: 1940-1980. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1982. (Includes the essay "Melville and Emerson's Rainbow")

Shurr, William H. "Eve's Bower: Hawthorne's Transition from Public Doctrines to Private Truths; Crit. Essays in Honor of Darrel Abel." Ruined Eden of the Present: Hawthorne, Melville, Poe. Eds. G. R. Thompson and Virgil L. Lokke. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1981. 143-69.

Williams, John. "The Impact of Transcendentalism on the Novels of Herman Melville." Dissertation Abstracts 26 (1965): 1052-1053.

| Top | Moby-Dick (1851)

Adams, Michael V. "Whaling and Difference: Moby-Dick Deconstructed." New Orleans Review 10.4 (Win. 1983): 59-64.

Andriano, Joseph. "Brother to Dragons: Race and Evolution in Moby-Dick." Atq: the american transcendental quarterly 10.2 (Jun 1906): 141-.

*Berthoff, Warner. "Characterization in Moby Dick." in The Example of Melville. Princeton UP, 1962.

* ** Bezanson, Walter E. "Moby Dick: Work of Art." eds. Tyrus Hillway & Luther Mansfield. Moby Dick: Centennial Essays. Dallas: SMU, 1953.

Bickman, Martin. ed. Approaches to Teaching HM's Moby-Dick. NY: MLA, 1985.

- - -. "Reinventing the Whale: Teaching Moby-Dick as Aesthetic Experience." Melville Society Extracts 117 (Jul 1999): 1-7.

Bluestein, Gene. "Ahab's Sin." Arizona Q. 41.2 (Sum. 1985): 101-116.

Braswell, William. "The Main Theme in Moby Dick." Emerson Society Q. 28 (Oct. 1962): 15-17.

**Brodtkorb, Paul. Ishmael's White World; a Phenomenological Reading of Moby Dick. New Haven: Yale UP, 1965. PS2384.M62 .B7

Buckley. J. F. "Skirting the Phallus, Circumscribing the Community: Steelkilt as Transvestic Rebel." Melville Society Extracts 104 (Mar. 1996): 14-19.

Busch, Briton. Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1994.

Cahir, Linda C. "Routinizing the Charismatic: Melville and Hollywood's Three Moby-Dicks." Melville Society Extracts 110 (Sep 1997): 11-17.

Cowan, Bainard. Exiled Waters: Moby-Dick and the Crisis of Allegory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1982. PS2384 .M62 C6

Dillingham, William B. "The Narrator of Moby Dick." English Studies 49 (Feb. 1968): 20-29.

Eldridge, H. G. "Careful Disorder: The Structure of Moby Dick." American Literature 39 (May 1967): 145-162.

Goering, Wynn M. "To Obey Rebelling: The Quaker Dilemma in Moby Dick." New England Q. 54.4 (Dec. 1981): 519-538.

Hands, Charles B. "The Comic Entrance to Moby-Dick." College Literature 2 (1975): 182-91.

Hartstein, Arnold M. "Myth and History in Moby Dick." American Transcendental Q. 57 (July 1985): 31-43.

Hayes, Kevin J. The Critical Response to HM's Moby-Dick. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. ISBN: 0-313-28772-4.

**Hayford, Harrison. "Unnecessary Duplicates: A Key to the Writing of Moby-Dick." New Perspectives on Melville. Ed. Faith Pullen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1978.

| Top | Herbert, T. Walter. "Calvinism and Cosmic Evil in Moby Dick." PMLA 84 (Oct. 1969): 1613-19.

- - -. Moby-Dick and Calvinism: A World Dismantled. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1977. PS2384.M62 H37

* Howard, Leon. "The Composition of Moby Dick." in Herman Melville: A Biography. Berkeley, 1951.

Horsford, Howard C. "The Design of the Argument in Moby Dick." Modern Fiction Studies 8 (Aug. 1962): 233-251.

Irey, Eugene F. A Concordance to HM's Moby-Dick. 2 vols. NY: garland, 1982.

Mansfield, Luther S. "Symbolism and Biblical Allusion in Moby Dick." Emerson Society Q. 28 (1962): 20-23.

McSweeney, Kerry. Moby Dick: Ishmael's Mighty Book. Boston: Twayne, 1986. PS2384 .M62 M37

Murray, Henry A. "In Nomine Diaboli." The New England Q. 24 (Dec. 1951): 435-452.

Myers, Henry Alonzo. "Captain Ahab's Discovery: The Tragic Meaning of Moby Dick." New England Q. 15 (Mar. 1942): 15-34.

**Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.

Parker, Hershel, and Brian Higgins. eds. Critical Essays on HM's Moby-Dick. NY: G K. Hall, 1992.

Reddick, Marcia. "'Something, Somehow Like Original Sin': Striking the Uneven Balance in 'The Town-Ho's Story' and Moby-Dick." Atq: american transcendental quarterly 10.2 (Jun 1996): 81-91.

Reising, Russell, and Peter J. Kvidera. "Fast Fish And Raw Fish: Moby-Dick, Japan, And Melville's Thematics of Geography." New England Quarterly 70.2 (Jun 1997): 285-306.

* Rosenberry, Edward H. "Comic Vision and Technique in Moby Dick." in Melville and the Comic Vision. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1955. PS2387 .R64

Schultz, Elizabeth. "The Sentimental Subtext of Moby-Dick: Melville's Response to the 'World of Woe'." Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 42.1 (1996): 29-51.

---. Unpainted to the Last: Moby Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1995.

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Melville's Readings: Revised and Enlarged Edition. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1988.

* Sedgwick, William E. "Ishmael vs. Ahab." in Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind. NY: Russell & Russell, 1962. (PS2387 .S4)

* Sewall, Richard B. "Moby Dick as Tragedy." in The Vision of Tragedy. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959. PN1892 .S43

| Top | Short, R. W.. "Melville as Symbolist." U of Kansas City Review 15 (Aug. 1948): 38-46.

Slattery, Dennis P. "Watery World/Watery Words: Ishmael's Write of Passage in Moby Dick." New Orleans Review (Sum. 1984): 62-66.

Shulman, Robert. "The Serious Functions of Melville's Phallic Jokes." American Literature 33 (May 1961): 179-194.

Spanos, William V. The Errant Art of Moby-Dick: The Canon, The Cold war, and the Struggle for American Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.

Sten, Christopher. Sounding the Whale: Moby-Dick as Epic Novel. Kent, Ohio: Kent SUP, 1991.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. A Checklist of Editions of Moby-Dick: 1851-1976. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1976.

Trimpi, H. P.. "Melville's Use of Demonology and Witchcraft in Moby Dick." Journal of History of Ideas 30 (Oct. 1969): 543-62.

**Vincent, Howard. The Trying Out of Moby-Dick. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949.

Vogel, Dan. "The Dramatic Chapters in Moby Dick." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 13 (Dec. 1958): 239-247.

Walcutt, Charles C. "The Fire Symbolism in Moby Dick." Modern Language Notes 59 (May 1944): 304-310.

Ward, J. A.. "The Function of the Cetological Chapters in Moby Dick." American Literature 28 (May 1956): 164-183.

Watters, R. E.. "The Meanings of the White Whale." U of Toronto Q. 20 (Jan. 1951): 155-168.

**Wenke, John. Melville's Muse: Literary Creation and the Forms of Philosophical Fiction. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1995.

Woodson, Thomas. "Ahab's Greatness: Prometheus as Narcissus." English Literary History (Se. 1966): 449-463.

Young, James D. "The Nine Gams of the Pequod." American Literature 15 (Jan. 1954): 449-463.

Yu, Beongcheon. "Ishmael's Equal Eye: The Source of Balance in Moby-Dick." English Literary History 32 (Mar. 1965): 110-125.

| Top | Moby-Dick: A Brief Discussion

"Whale of a tale: The best-known book hardly anyone has read marks its 150th birthday." - an article by Andre Mouchard, Nov. 23, 2001

Publication Dates & Sales Information: British edition, entitled The Whale, came out on October 18, 1851; Bentley, the publisher, had sold about 280 copies of the printing of 500 four and a half months since publication. The American edition came out on November 14, 1851; the publisher Harpers' sales for the first eleven days were 1,535 copies; another 471 went during the succeeding two and a half months. (MD NN pp. 688-689)

Type of plot: symbolic allegory Time: Early nineteenth century

Topics: 1. It is a reliable treatise on whales and the whaling industry. 2. Excellent commentary on the universe and human destiny. 3. It is rich in symbolism - philosophical speculations about God and Nature. 4. The white whale, among others, could represent evil, Melville's Puritan conscience, religion, or the ultimate mystery of the universe. 5. It is an adventure-romance of the sea, an epic quest, a Faustian bargain, and a metaphysical speculation.

Principal Characters: Ishmael, schoolteacher and part-time sailor; a Presbyterian, like Melville, he projects Calvinistic thinking tempered by his background in literature and philosophy. He discusses such issues as free will, predestination, necessity, and damnation. He is the sole survivor of the Pequod. Queequeg, Starbuck's veteran harpooner, a tattooed cannibal from Kokovoko, an uncharted South Seas Island. Disillusioned with Christianity, he worships a black idol Yojo. He becomes a close friend of Ishmael. Captain Ahab is obsessed with the killing of a white whale that has maimed him. He has a scar which extends from his head to his leg. Starbuck, the first mate, is bold enough to criticize Ahab's vengeance, considers mutiny but fails. Stubb, the second mate, is carefree, indifferent, and fatalistic. Flask (King-Post), the third mate, enjoys killing the whales for the fun of it. Fedallah is Ahab's tall, turbaned Parsee servant. He prophesies that Ahab will neither have hearse or coffin when he dies. Moby Dick, a giant albino sperm whale that has become a legend. Pip is the happy, little, black cabin boy who falls from a boat during a whale chase and is abandoned by Stubb hoping another boat will pick him up. When brought back on the Pequod he has become demented from fright. Tashtego, an American Indian, is Stubb's harpooner. Daggoo, a giant African, is Flask's harpooner. Father Mapple, a former whaler now the minister at Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford, preaches a Calvinistic sermon, on Job, filled with seafaring terms. Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad are Quakers and principal owners of the Pequod. Elijah, a madman who warns Ishmael and Queequeg against shipping with Ahab. Dough-Boy is the pale, bread-faced, and dull-witted steward. Fleece, an old black man, is the ship's cook. At Stubb's insistence, he preaches a sermon to the sharks and is disgusted by Stubb's craving for whale meat. Bulkington is the strong, tanned helmsman. Perth is the ship's blacksmith, who makes for Ahab the harpoon intended to be Moby Dick's death dart, which Ahab baptizes in the devil's name. Captain Gardiner is the skipper of Rachel for whose lost son Ahab refuses to search.

| Top | The Nine Gams or Encounters

The Pequod consults or gams with nine different ships. These gams create increasing tensions of the chase, they add evidence of the ferocity and cunning of Moby Dick, and they provide name symbolism which have a bearing on the narrative. 1. The Albatross is named for the sailor's favorite bird of good fortune; it passes by without pausing, giving the impression of impending evil. 2. The crew of the Town-Ho tells a story hinting that Moby Dick may be considered an agent for the justice of heaven. 3. The Jeroboam provides a second story which may foreshadow Ahab's doom. On board is a violent Shaker fanatic who believes himself to be the archangel Gabriel and who considers Moby Dick as God incarnate, thus hunting him is blasphemy. 4. The German captain of the Jungfrau is ignorant of Moby Dick and is also inexperienced in whaling, permitting the Pequod's crew to defeat him in the capture of a bull whale. 5. The Rose-Bud or Bouton de Rose is a French ship that has captured a sick whale; realizing that the bloated whale contains prized ambergris (a secretion used in perfumes), Stubb succeeds in cheating the unwary French captain of the carcass by offering to tow it away. 6. In the Samuel Enderby, a British vessel, Ahab chats with a captain who has lost an arm to a sperm whale but, in contrast with Ahab, is not revengeful. 7. The Bachelor is a happy ship and, successful in catching whales, is heading home. Ahab finds the captain and crew "too damned jolly" for his own mood. 8. The Rachel approaches looking for help in trying to locate a lost whaleboat containing, among the crew, the captain's son. Also disclosed is information of the sighting of Moby Dick. Ahab gives up this opportunity to show his humanitarian spirit and pushes forward in the relentless pursuit of his nemesis. 9. The Delight is ironically misnamed. There is nothing happy about her; she has recently attacked Moby Dick and lost the boat crew. Her "hollow-cheeked" captain dolefully affirms the opinion that "the harpoon is not yet forged" that is capable of destroying the White Whale. In spite of this clear warning, Ahab rushes on.

| Top | "Bartleby, the Scrivner" (1853) - Selected Bibliography

Cervo, Nathan A. "Melville's Bartleby: Imago Dei." American Transcendental Quarterly 14 (1972): 152-56.

Fiene, Donald M. "Bartleby the Christ." American Transcendental Quarterly 7 (1970): 18-23.

Foley, Barbara. "From Wall Street to Astor Place: Historicizing Melville's Bartleby." American Literature 72.1 (2000): 87-100.

Green, John M. "Bartleby, the Perfect Pupil." American Transcendental Quarterly 7.1 (Mar 1993): 65(11).

Jaffe, David. "Bartleby the Scrivener" and Bleak House: Melville's debt to Dickens. Arlington, Va.: Mardi Press, 1981.

Kuebrich, David. "Melville's Doctrine of Assumptions: The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in 'Bartleby'." New england quarterly 69.3 (Sep 1996): 381-406.

Schechter, Harold. "Bartleby the Chronometer." Studies in Short Fiction 19 (1982): 359-66.

Swann, Charles. "Dating the Action of 'Bartleby'." Notes and Queries 32 (1985): 357-8.

| Top | "Benito Cereno" (1855)

Dooley, Reinhold J. "Fixing Meaning: Babo as Sign in 'Benito Cereno'." Atq: the american transcendental quarterly 9.1 (MAR 1995): 41-51.

Horsley-Meacham, Gloria. "Bull of the Nile: Symbol, History, and Racial Myth in 'Benito Cereno'." New England Quarterly 64.2 (Jun 1991): 225(18).

- - - - -. "The Johnsonian Jest in `Benito Cereno'." ANQ 6.1 (Jan 1993): 17(2).

Martin, Terry J. "The Idea of Nature in `Benito Cereno'." Studies in Short Fiction 30.2 (Sprg 1993): 161(8).

Emery, Allan M. "The Topicality of Depravity in 'Benito Cereno'." American Literature 55 (1983): 316-31.

Haegert, John. "Voicing Slavery Through Silence: Narrative Mutiny in Melville's 'Benito Cereno'." Mosaic 26.2 (1993): 21-38.

Justman, Stewart. "Repression and Self in 'Benito Cereno'." Studies in Short Fiction 15 (1978): 301-06.

Karcher, Carolyn L. "Darkening Shadows of Doom in 'The Encantadas,' 'Benito Cereno,' and 'The Bell-Tower'." Shadow over the Promised Land: Slaverv, Race, and Violence in Melville's America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980. 109-59.

Kavanagh, James H. "That Hive of Subtlety': 'Benito Cereno' and the Liberal Hero. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 352-83.

Leslie, Joshua, and Sterling Stuckey. "The Death of Benito Cereno: A Reading of Herman on Slavery." Journal of Negro History 67 (1982): 287-301.

Martin, Charles, and James Snead. "Reading through Blackness: Colorless Signifiers in 'Benito Cereno'." Yale Journal of Criticism 4.1 (1990): 231-51.

Sundquist, Eric. "Suspense and Tautology in 'Benito Cereno'." Glyph 8 (1981): 103-26.

Thomas, Brook. "The Legal Fictions of Herman Melville and Lemuel Shaw." Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 24-51.

Weiner, Susan. "'Benito Cereno' and the Failure of Law." Arizona Ouarterly 47.2 (1991): 1-28.

Zagarell, Sandra A. "Reenvisioning America: Melville's 'Benito Cereno'." ESQ 30 (1984): 245-59.

Zlatic, Thomas D. "'Benito Cereno': Melville's 'Back-Handed-Well-Knot.'" Arizona Ouarterly 34 (1978): 327-43.

| Top | Billy Budd, Sailor (1924) - Selected Bibliography

Barnett, Sylvan. "The Execution in Billy Budd." American Literature 33 (Jan. 1962): 517-519.

Berthoff, Warner. "Certain Phenomenal Men": The Example of Billy Budd." Journal of English Literary History. 27 (Dec. 1960): 334-351.

Budd, John M. "Law and Morality in `Billy Budd' and The Ox-Bow Incident." CLA Journal 35.2 (Dec 1991): 185(13).

Fogle, Richard H. "Billy Budd - Acceptance or Irony." Tulane Studies in English 8 (1958): 107-113.

- - - "Billy Budd: The Order of the Fall." Nineteenth Century Fiction 15 (Dec. 1960): 189-205.

Franklin, H. Bruce. "Billy Budd and Capital Punishment: A Tale of Three Centuries." American literature 69.2 (Jun 1997): 337-361.

Goodwyn, Cary. "How to Read Republican: An Analysis of Herman Melville's `Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)'." ATQ 4.3 (Sep 1990): 239(17).

Haydock, John S. "Melville's Seraphita: Billy Budd, Sailor." Melville Society extracts 104 (Mar 1996): 2-14.

Miller, James E. "Billy Budd: The Catastrophe of Innocence." Modern Language Notes 73 (Mar 1958): 168-176.

Noone, John B. "Billy Budd: Two Concepts of Nature." American Literature 29 (Nov. 1957): 249-262.

Stafford, William T. Melville's Billy Budd and the Critics. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1961. PS2384 .B758

Stein, William B. "Billy Budd: The Nightmare of History." Criticism 3 (Sum. 1961): 237-250.

West, Ray B. "The Unity of Billy Budd." Hudson Review 5 (Spr 1952): 120-128.

Withim, Philip. "Billy Budd: Testament of Resistance." Modern Language Q. 20 (Jun. 1959): 115-127.

Yoder, Jonathan A. "The Protagonists' Rainbow in `Billy Budd': Critical Trimming of Truth's Ragged Edges." ATQ 7.2 (Jun 1993): 97(17).

| Top | Billy Budd: A Brief Discussion

By the time Melville was forty-seven, it was clear to him that he could not earn a living as a writer. He sought and received an appointment through the Treasury Department as a deputy inspector in the customhouse. From 1866 for almost two decades, Melville worked at this job. Beginning 1884, the Melvilles began to receive payments from a legacy that had come to Herman's wife, Elizabeth, and on December 31, 1885, Melville handed in his resignation. He retired to devote himself to his books and his writing; Elizabeth rejoiced that he had a desk full of unfinished work to keep him busy.

One of the first poems he turned to was a ballad about a sailor who had been involved in a mutiny plot, had been apprehended, tried, and sentenced to hang. As Billy, the sailor, lay in irons before the hanging, his mind wandered over the past, recollecting good times and good shipmates. Melville was to call it "Billy in the Darbies," and he wrote a brief prose headnote for it to explain Billy's situation to the reader.

In June, 1888, Melville read an article called "The Mutiny on the Somers," by Lieutenant H. D. Smith, in the American Magazine. In 1842, three sailors on the US. brig Somers were suspected of plotting mutiny. The Captain summoned his officers not to convene a court, but to ask their advice. Without trial, without even being arraigned and so, without the opportunity to defend themselves or even ask questions, the three men were judged guilty and hanged. One of the men, Elisha Small, a great favorite with the crew and one whom many felt to be innocent, is reputed to have faced the flag and said, as he was about to be run up, "God bless that flag!"

When Melville was a boy, his favorite hero had been his older cousin, Guert Gansevoort, who was the First Lieutenant aboard the Somers. As one of the officers advising the Captain, cousin Guert was deeply implicated in an act which brought down scorn, outrage, and hatred upon his head. Although the Captain and his officers were cleared by a formal naval board of inquiry, and although Melville's family all felt that Cousin Guert was innocent in the eyes of God and had courageously done what he had to do as much as he loathed the necessity, nevertheless in the eyes of the world and of the sailors of the fleet, Cousin Guert was a fallen man. As the family understood the story within its own councils, Guert's "inside narrative" disclosed a situation of extreme urgency from which dire consequences would have followed if a total example had not been made of the three men. Guert himself, however, would make no public statements about the affair.

In the words of Melville's biographer, Leon Howard, "the inside story and the historical record were at odds in their implications concerning the puzzling actions of Lt. Gansevoort and of the Captain, and Melville's interest was diverted ... to the problem of reconciling conflicting implications. How could a man in a judicial position be held morally free from guilt while condemning to death another human being who was known to be morally innocent of the wrongdoing?"

What had begun as a ballad and had the been expanded into a prose work introducing John Claggart and the conflict between an angelic foretopman and a demonic master-at-arms finally centered on Captain Vere and the nature of his responsibility in a world where the conflict of the "inside narrative" became a frightening metaphor of human existence in the world at large. It is on the character and function of Captain Vere, consequently, that critical attention has necessarily concentrated.

(Source: Milton R. Stern, ed., Billy Budd, 1975)

| Top | Studies in Hawthorne-Melville Friendship

Bell, Millicent. "Melville and Hawthorne at the Grave of St. John (A Debt to Pierre Bayle)." Modern Language Notes, 67 (1952), 116-118.

Canby, H. S. "Hawthorne and Melville." Classic Americans: Eminent American Writers From Irving To Whitman. 1931; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959.

Carpenter Frederic I. "Puritans Preferred Blondes: The Heroines of Melville [sic] and Hawthorne." New England Quarterly, 9 (1936), 253-272.

Curl, Vega. Pasteboard Masks: Fact As Spiritual Symbol In The Novels Of Hawthorne And Melville. 1931; rpt. Philadelphia: R. West, 1976.

Gross, Seymour L. "Hawthorne Versus Melville." Bucknell Review, 14 (1966), 89-109.

Hayford, Harrison. "Hawthorne, Melville, and the Sea." New England Quarterly, 19 (1946), 435-452.

Hoeltje, Hubert H. "Hawthorne, Melville, and 'Blackness.' " American Literature, 37 (1965), 41-51.

Kimmey, John L. "Pierre and Robin: Melville's Debt to Hawthorne." Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 38 (1965), 90-92.

Levy, Leo B. "Hawthorne, Melville, and the Monitor." American Literature, 37 (1965), 33-40.

Lueders, Edward G. "The Melville-Hawthorne Relationshipian." Western Humanities Review, 4 (1950), 323-334.

Maxwell, Desmond E. S. "The Tragic Phase: Melville and Hawthorne." American Fiction: The Intellectual Background. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963.

May, John R. "The Possibility of Renewal: The Ideal and Real in Hawthorne, Melville and Twain." Toward A New Earth: Apocalypse In The American Novel. Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1972. [42-91]

McCarthy, Paul. "The Extraordinary Man as Idealist in Novels by Hawthorne and Melville." Emerson Society Quarterly 54 (1969): 43-51. [Excellent!]

McCorquodale, Marjorie Kimball. "Melville's Pierre as Hawthorne." University Of Texas Studies In English 33 (1954): 97-102. [How about ISABEL as Hawthorne?!!]

| Top | Miller, James E., Jr. "Hawthorne and Melville: No! in Thunder." Quests Surd And Absurd: Essays In American Literature. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967. (186-208.)

Miller, James E., Jr. "Hawthorne and Melville: The Unpardonable Sin." Publications Of The Modern Language Association Of America, 70 (1955), 91-114.

Murray, Henry A., et al. Melville & Hawthorne In The Berkshires: A Symposium. Ed. Howard P. Vincent. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State Univ. Press, 1968.

Sealts, Merton M, Jr. "Approaching Melville Through 'Hawthorne and His Mosses.' " Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 28, Part 3 (1962), 12-15.

Seelye, John D. " 'Ungraspable Phantom': Reflections of Hawthorne in Pierre and The Confidence-Man." Studies In The Novel, 1, No. 4 (1969), 436-443.

Stewart, Randall. "Melville and Hawthorne." South Atlantic Quarterly, 51 1952), 436-446.

Stewart, Randall. "The Vision of Evil in Hawthorne and Melville." The Tragic Vision And The Christian Faith. Ed. Nathan A. Scott, Jr. New York: Association Press, 1957.

Waggoner, Hyatt H. "Hawthorne and Melville Against the Reader With Their Abode." Studies In The Novel, 2, No. 4 (1970), 420-424.

Watson, Charles N., Jr. "The Estrangement of Hawthorne and Melville." New England Quarterly, 46 (1973), 380-402. [Excellent!!!!!!] ****

There are others, of course, but there is much good reading and ruminating to be found in these pages. And don't overlook the "Introductions" and "Notes" to be found in various editions of Melville's works...esp. Weaver's The Shorter Novels Of Herman Melville, and the Hendricks House editions of Clarel, The Confidence-Man, and Moby-Dick. (and, of course, the Northwestern-Newberry editions)

(Compiled by Robert Kilgore Jr. and sent to the Ishmail Chat group.)

| Top |Melville - A Brief Assessment

For twenty years before his death in 1891, Herman Melville was a forgotten man. This is best reflected in a couple obituary notices:

"He won considerable fame as an author by the publication of a book in 1847 (actually 1846) entitled Typee. ... This was his best work, although he has since written a number of other stories, which were published more for private than public circulation. ... During the ten years subsequent to the publication of this book he was employed at the NY Custom House." - NY Daily Tribune, September 29, 1891

"Of late years Mr. Melville - probably because he had ceased his literary activity - has fallen into a literary decline, as a result of which his books are little known. Probably, if the truth were known, even his own generation has long thought him dead, so quiet have been the later years of his life." - The Press, September 29, 1891

Soon after his death, there was a short revival of interest in Melville's work. Many of his works were published again and so were many appreciative scholarly evaluations. A second Melville revival took place about 1919 coinciding with the centennial of Melville's birth. Still unpublished was Melville's last work (Billy Budd, 1924) considered by many to be as important as Moby Dick. By 1930s Melville scholarship became prominent (Hugh Hetherington completed the first doctoral dissertation on Melville at the Univ. of Michigan in 1933), and, soon after the second world war, a Melville society was organized. Through the next two decades Melville and his writing attracted more research and scholarship than any other American author.

| Top |Study Questions

"Bartleby"

1. What does the subtitle of "Bartleby" suggest? What is the significance of Wall Street and the walls in the story?

2. What is the significance of the information that the narrator provides about himself and his employees at the beginning of the story? How does it prepare us to understand Bartleby and the narrator's attitude toward him?

3. Why does Melville tell the story from the point of view of the employer rather than of the office staff or of Bartleby himself? What effect does this narrative strategy have on the reader?

4. How reliable is the narrator? Are there any indications that he might be obtuse or unreliable? Give examples.

5. What incident unleashes Bartleby's passive resistance? What escalates it at each point?

6. What assumptions govern the question that the narrator asks Bartleby: "What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?"

7. What ethic does Melville implicitly oppose to the ethic of Wall Street? (This question leads into a discussion of the New Testament echoes running through the story.)

8. Why does the narrator conclude that Bartleby "was the victim of an innate and incurable disorder"? How does it affect our responses to the story if we accept this conclusion?

9. What is the significance of the postscript the narrator appends to the story? What psychological (or ideological) purpose does it serve for the narrator? What symbolic purpose does it serve for Melville?

10. How much has the encounter with Bartleby changed the narrator by the end of the story? Is the narrator "saved"?

11. Choose any one of the following moments of dialogue in Melville and use it as a prism through which to "read" the work in which it appears: (a) "'Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'" (b) "'Follow your leader.'" (c) "'God bless Captain Vere!'"

12. Part of what fascinates the reader (and possibly Melville himself) about Bartleby is his inscrutability. Describe the various "walls" Bartleby finds himself trapped behind and explore the ways in which the story's structure or design reinforces the reader's inability to penetrate the inscrutability of those walls.

| Top | "Paradise and Tartarus":

1. What contrast does the opening of "Paradise" draw between the Bachelors' haven and the outside world? How does Melville develop the implications of the opening passage in the rest of the sketch?

2. How might the fate of the medieval Knights Templars be relevant to the nineteenth-century Templars?

3. Read out loud the paragraphs about the survival of Templars in modern London and ask: What effect does this imagery have? What attitude does it create toward the Templars?

4. Read out loud the description of the Templars' banquet and ask: What is the significance of this imagery? What associations does it suggest to you? (The teacher might amplify the discussion by pointing out the parody of Plato's Symposium suggested by dubbing the field-marshall/waiter "Socrates.") What bearing does this description have on the second sketch of the pair?

5. What role does the narrator play in each of the two sketches? How would we situate him vis-à-vis the bachelors of the first sketch and the factory owner and workers of the second sketch?

6. What business takes the narrator to the paper mill? What might his "seedsman's business" symbolize?

7. Why does Melville link these two sketches as a pair? What devices does he use to cement the links? What connections does he invite readers to make between the bachelors and the maids, between Temple Bar and the New England paper factory? How is the contrast between the bachelors of the first sketch and maids of the second sketch continued within the second sketch?

8. Read out loud the passage describing the landscape of Devil's Dungeon and ask what its imagery suggests.

9. What is the significance of the imagery Melville uses to describe the factory? (Read aloud passages drawing the students' attention to the girls' dehumanization and the machine's preemption of their reproductive functions.)

10. What is Melville critiquing in this pair of sketches? Why does he link the economic to the sexual, production to reproduction?

| Top | "Benito Cereno":

1. Through whose eyes do we view the events in the story? Where in the text does Melville shift into Delano's point of view? Whose point of view does the Deposition represent?

2. Why doesn't Melville choose to write the story from Babo's point of view? What might his purpose be in confining us to Delano's and later Benito Cereno's point of view? What limitations does this narrative strategy impose on us as readers?

3. How reliable are Delano's perceptions of reality? What tendencies in particular make him an unreliable interpreter of the behavior he sees manifested on board the San Dominick?

4. The best example of how Delano's racism keeps him from recognizing that the blacks have staged a revolt is the episode in which he sees Babo use the flag of Spain as a bib for Don Benito, but misinterprets it as an "odd instance of the African love of bright colors and fine shows." How does that episode originate?

5. What attitude toward slavery does Delano exhibit? How does his attitude differ from Benito Cereno's?

6. Most of the confusion in interpreting "Benito Cereno" arises from the latter part of the story. It is easy to see that Delano's view of blacks as stupid is wrong, but does Melville present Benito Cereno's view of blacks as a corrective to stereotype, or merely as another stereotype? Does the Deposition represent the "truth"?

7. How does the language of the Deposition differ from the language Melville uses elsewhere in the text? What makes us take it for the "truth"?

8. What is Benito Cereno's interpretation of events, as opposed to Delano's initial interpretation? How does he explain the slaves' revolt?

9. Does the Deposition indirectly provide any alternative explanations of why the blacks may have revolted? What does it tell us about the blacks' actual aims? How do they try to achieve those aims?

10. Does Melville provide any clues to an interpretation of the story that transcends the racist stereotypes of Delano and Cereno?

11. What is the narrative point of view of the few pages following the Deposition? How do you interpret the dialogue between the two captains? Does it indicate that either Delano or Cereno has undergone any change in consciousness or achieved a new understanding of slavery as a result of his ordeal?

12. What seems to be the message of the scene with which the story ends? What do you think Melville was trying to convey through the story? How does the story continue to be relevant or prophetic?

13. Argue that in describing Hawthorne's "power of blackness" in his review of Mosses, Melville was actually characterizing his own work. Focus on "Benito Cereno" in your analysis and consider whether or not Melville focuses on black slaves as human beings.

14. Newton Arvin has written about "Benito Cereno" that "the story is an artistic miscarriage, with moments of undeniable power." Evaluate the fairness of this statement given your own reading of the story.

15. Imagine a retelling of "Benito Cereno" in which Babo becomes the hero. What particular inconsistencies within the story as it stands would the narrator have to resolve?

| Top | Billy Budd:

1. Why does Melville begin the story with a description of the Handsome Sailor? What does this figure seem to represent? What is the significance of the fact that the first example Melville cites of the Handsome Sailor is "a native African of the unadulterate blood of Ham"? What characteristics does Billy share with the Black Handsome Sailor? What is the purpose of the analogies Melville suggests between the "barbarians" of pre-Christian Europe, Africa, and the South Seas? In what respects does Billy fail to conform fully to the Handsome Sailor archetype?

2. What are the historical contexts of the story? What is the purpose of the historical background Melville supplies on the Nore and Spithead mutinies?

3. What is the significance of Billy's being impressed from the Rights-of-Man to the Bellipotent?

4. What relationship does Melville set up between Billy, Claggart, and Vere? What qualities does each represent? Why are Claggart and Vere attracted to Billy? In what ways is he a threat to them?

5. How do you interpret Melville's definition of "Natural Depravity"? To whom does it most obviously apply in the story? To whom else might it also apply?

6. How does the tragedy occur? How might it have been avoided?

7. How does Melville invite the reader to judge Vere's behavior and decision to hang Billy? What passages, dialogues, and scenes must we take into account?

8. What tactics and arguments does Vere use to sway his officers? What are the political consequences (in real life as well as in the story) of accepting Vere's arguments? Do you see any contradictions in Vere's arguments, or do you find them rational and persuasive? Is Melville's description of "Natural Depravity" at all relevant to an evaluation of Vere's conduct at the trial ("Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound")?

9. How do you interpret the many biblical allusions in the story? In what ways do they redefine or amplify the meaning of the story? What relationship(s) do you see between the religious and political interpretations the story invites? How does Melville characterize the role of the chaplain?

10. After the hanging, Vere forestalls possible disturbances by ordering the drums to muster the men to quarters earlier than usual. He then justifies his action by explaining how he views art and the purpose it serves: " `With mankind . . . forms, measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus spellbinding the wild denizens of the wood.' " Does Melville endorse this concept of art in Billy Budd? How does the form of the story jibe (or conflict) with Vere's ideal of "measured forms"? How does the glorification of the Handsome Sailor, and the imagery used to describe him, jibe (or conflict) with Vere's view of "the wild denizens of the wood"?

11. What is the effect of the three sequels Melville appends to the story? What further light do they shed on Vere and on the political interests governing his decision? To whom does the story give the last word?

12. Depending on the order of assignments, teachers can invite students to draw connections between:

--the status of slaves, sailors, and factory workers.

--the legal arguments Vere uses in his role as prosecuting attorney at Billy's trial, and the portrayal of lawyers and the law in "Bartleby" and "Paradise and Tartarus."

--Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience and Vere's defense of martial law and the Articles of War.

--Vere's insistence that "the heart, sometimes the feminine in man, be ruled out" and Fuller's critique of the rigid sexual stereotypes that patriarchal ideology imposes on men and women.

13. Explore the two kinds of justice Melville sets in opposition in Billy Budd, Sailor and discuss the moral and thematic consequences of Billy's death.

General:

1. In Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick, Ishmael, the narrator, relates a tale of mutiny he once narrated&emdash;long before "telling" Moby-Dick itself&emdash;to a group of Spanish friends "smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn." The story may appear to be as much a rehearsal for Melville's later stories as it was for Moby-Dick itself. Focusing either on "Benito Cereno" or on "Billy Budd, Sailor" in light of "The Town-Ho's Story," examine Melville's later explorations of mutiny or feared mutiny and the characters who develop or refine attributes Melville embodies in Steelkilt and Radney.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century - Herman Melville." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/melville.html (provide page date or date of your login).