Le notazioni del grande scrittore americano durante il suo viaggio nel Bel Paese. Dalle pagine del racconto, costruito come una 'soggettiva in tempo reale' (dando così al lettore la possibilità di vivere le sensazioni nel momento stesso in cui Melville le vede e le descrive) emerge appieno il carattere del narratore. Immerso, in quel particolare momento della sua vita, in una profonda crisi esistenziale, specchio e misura della sua anima tormentata e irrisolta, Melville permea di quelle sensazioni anche le parole dedicate alla nostra penisola.

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.

Typee recounts the exploits of Tom, a runaway sailor, on the South Seas island of Nukuheva, from his capture by the Typees, by reputation 'a fierce and unrelenting tribe of savages,' to his daring escape when he realizes they have no intention of ever letting him return to his former life. Melville's first book and a bestseller, Typee is a story of South Seas customs, rituals, and society, and a provocative critique of civilized Western life.

I compagni lo chiamano Bel Marinaio, ma Billy Budd non è solo bello: è anche gentile, disponibile e risplende di tutta la grazia della giovinezza. Molti lo amano, per questo. Ma alcuni, per lo stesso motivo, lo odiano. E quando Billy passa da un mercantile all'Indomita, una nave da guerra, non bastano né l'amicizia di un saggio danese né l'intelligenza del capitano a salvarlo. Non basta neanche l'innocenza. Ultimo racconto scritto da Melville, Billy Budd è un classico della letteratura dagli echi biblici e shakesperiani. E lo scontro fra l'inconsapevolezza di Billy e l'odio del maestro d'armi Claggart non è solo un terribile strumento di morte, né il simbolo della frizione fra legge e morale: è soprattutto la rappresentazione della lotta fra bene e male.

First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, 'the greatest novel in American literature.' The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel's narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of whales, while reaching existential depths that excite debate and contemplation to this day. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains original illustrations by Rockwell Kent and commentary that includes excerpts from one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne.

Herman Melville's peerless allegorical masterpiece is the epic saga of the fanatical Captain Ahab, who swears vengeance on the mammoth white whale that has crippled him. Often considered to be the Great American Novel, Moby-Dick is at once a starkly realistic story of whaling, a romance of unusual adventure, and a searing drama of heroic courage, moral conflict, and mad obsession. It is world-renowned as the greatest sea story ever told.

Moby-Dick, widely misunderstood in its own time, has since become an indubitable classic of American literature.

Melville's short stories are masterpieces and are best appreciated on more than one level. Those presented in this collection are rich with symbolism and spiritual depth, showing the timeless power of his writing.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Herman Melville (1819-91) brought as much genius to the smaller-scale literary forms as he did to the full-blown novel: his poems and the short stories and novellas collected in this volume reveal a deftness and a delicacy of touch that is in some ways even more impressive than the massive, tectonic passions of Moby-Dick. In a story like "Bartleby, the Scrivener" -- one of the very few perfect representatives of the form in the English language -- he displayed an unflinching precision and insight and empathy in his depiction of the drastically alienated inner life of the title character. In "Benito Cereno," he addressed the great racial dilemmas of the nineteenth century with a profound, almost surreal imaginative clarity. And in Billy, Budd, Sailor, the masterpiece of his last years, he fused the knowledge and craft gained from a lifetime's magnificent work into a pure, stark, flawlessly composed tale of innocence betrayed and destroyed. Melville is justly honored for the epic sweep of his mind, but his lyricism, his skill in rendering the minute, the particular, the local, was equally sublime.

'Come già nell'enorme 'Moby Dick' - scriveva Pavese nel 1940 - anche nel breve e perfetto 'Benito Cereno' il mare è assai più che un ambiente: è il volto visibile, infinitamente ricco d'analogie, dell'arcana realtà delle cose. E ciò è vero non soltanto nel senso che, facendosi poesia, qualunque ambiente perde la sua limitatezza documentaria e diventa creazione fantastica, ma nel senso, più raro, che il mare è qui la sola forma sensibile che agli occhi di Melville possa degnamente incarnare il cupo e ironico nocciolo demoniaco dell'universo...

At one time the most popular of Melville's works, Typee was known as a travelogue that idealized and romanticized a mysterious South Sea island for readers in the ruthless, industrial, 'civilized' world of the nineteenth century. But Melville's story of Tommo, the Yankee sailor who enters the flawed Pacific paradise of Nuku Hiva, is also a fast-moving adventure tale, an autobiographical account of the author's own Polynesian stay, an examination of the nature of good and evil, and a frank exploration of sensuality and exotic ritual.
This edition of Typee, which reproduces the definitive text and the complete, never-before-published manuscript reading text, includes invaluable explanatory commentary by John Bryant.

E' il racconto di una lunga spedizione di caccia alle balene, avvenuta intorno al 1840 a bordo del 'Pequod', salpando da Nantucket, la capitale mondiale delle baleniere. Moby Dick è la leggendaria e feroce balena bianca, simbolo della lotta sostenuta dall'uomo contro le combattive balene.

'Ambiguities indeed! One long brain-muddling, soulbewildering ambiguity (to borrow Mr. Melville's style), like Melchisedeck without beginning or end - a labyrinth without a clue - an Irish bog without so much as a Jack o' th'-lantern to guide the wanderer's footsteps - the dream of a distempered stomach, disordered by a hasty supper on half-cooked pork chops.'
So judged the New York Herald when Pierre was first published in 1852, with most contemporary reviewers joining in the general condemnation: 'a dead failure,' 'this crazy rigmarole,' and 'a literary mare's nest.' Latter-day critics have recognized in the story of Melville's idealistic young hero a corrosive satire of the sentimental-Gothic novel, and a revolutionary foray into modernist literary techniques. As William Spengemann writes in his introduction to this edition, 'For anyone who, being aware of the culture of modernity, is curious about its origins, Pierre ranks with Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, and the poems of Emily Dickinson as one of the privileged places where the dead past can be seen giving way inexorably to the living present.'

Ishmael, narratore e testimone, si imbarca sulla baleniera 'Pequod', il cui capitano è Achab. Il capitano ha giurato vendetta a Moby Dick, una immensa balena bianca che, in un viaggio precedente, gli aveva troncato una gamba. Inizia un inseguimento per i mari di tre quarti del mondo. Lunghe attese, discussioni, riflessioni filosofiche, accompagnano l'inseguimento. L'unico amico di Ishmael morirà prima della fine della vicenda. E' Queequeg, un indiano che si era costruito una bara intarsiata con strani geroglifici. Moby Dick viene infine avvistata e arpionata. Trascinerà nell'abisso lo stesso Achab, crocefisso sul suo dorso dalle corde degli arpioni. Ishmael è l'unico che sopravvive, usando, come zattera, la bara di Queequeg.

A skipper of a 19th century whaling boat is obsessed with the idea of harpooning the whale that is responsible for the loss of his leg.