The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville

This new collection offers timely, critical essays specially commissioned to provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.

Robert S. Levine (Edited by)

9781107023130, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 November 2013

282 pages, 7 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.59 kg

The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville provides timely, critical essays on Melville's classic works. The essays have been specially commissioned for this volume and provide a complete overview of Melville's career. Melville's major novels are discussed, along with a range of his short fiction and poetry, including neglected works ripe for rediscovery. The volume includes essays on such new topics as Melville and oceanic studies, Melville and animal studies, and Melville and the planetary, along with a number of essays that focus on form and aesthetics. Written at a level both challenging and accessible, this New Companion brings together a team of leading international scholars to offer students of American literature the most comprehensive introduction available to Melville's art.

Notes on contributors
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Melville's life
Texts and abbreviations
Introduction Robert S. Levine
1. Melville and the nonhuman world Geoffrey Sanborn
2. Melville and oceanic studies Hester Blum
3. Democracy and Melville's aesthetics Jennifer Greiman
4. White-Jacket: telling who is - and ain't - a slave Jeannine Marie DeLombard
5. Reading Moby-Dick Samuel Otter
6. Pierre, life history, and the obscure Wyn Kelley
7. 'Bartleby' and the magazine fiction Graham Thompson
8. Skepticism and The Confidence-Man Maurice S. Lee
9. Melville the poet in the postbellum world Elizabeth Renker
10. Judgment in Billy Budd Gregg Crane
11. Melville and queerness without character Michael Snediker
12. Melville with pictures Elisa Tamarkin
13. Melville's planetary compass Timothy Marr
14. Wound, beast, revision: versions of the Melville meme John Bryant
15. Cold war allegories and the politics of criticism Christopher Castiglia
Selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]