Melville: His World and Work - Softcover

Delbanco, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330371088 ISBN 13: 9780330371087

Verlag: Picador, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Herman Melville was born into a family that in the fledgling republic had lost both money and status. Toughened at sea as a young man, he returned home to chronicle the deepest crises of his time while forever shaping our literature with Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. Delbanco traces Melville’s growth from the bawdy storytelling of Typee through the spiritual preoccupations building up to Moby-Dick, and the profound disillusionment of later works. He uncovers autobiographical traces throughout Melville’s writing, shows the relentless financial pressure and declining critical and popular esteem that plagued his career, and, above all, illuminate the stunning achievements of his oeuvre. Finally we understand how Melville, more than any other American writer, has captured the popular imagination.

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Críticas:

"Masterful. . . Delbanco is a fine historian as well as a fine critic"-"The New Republic" "An eclectic, humane, historically grounded tribute to Melville's best achievements and a moving account of the troubles that closed in on him. . . . Among recent lives of Melville, this one has no peer for grace of style, vividness of historical evocation, and sympathy for a subject whose flaws and prejudices are nevertheless kept in view."-"The New York Review of Books" "In Andrew Delbanco, Melville has found the perfect combination of biographer and critic [skilled] at re-creating the circumstances -- the historical moment, the physical setting, the emotional state, the spiritual frenzy, that attended Melville's art." -"The" "Wall Street Journal" "Andrew Delbanco places the enigmatic Herman Melville in a light that is remarkably sustained and often brilliant. His acute sense of the man, his wide-angled literary insight, and the range and strength of his grasp of Melville's world enable Delbanco to deliver full-scale the strangest of our literary giants. He also has placed himself in the company of Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin and Richard Chase as a trustee of our literature who writes as well as he reads." -Ted Solotaroff" Delbanco's "Melville" is a reward, a brilliant and nourishing narrative that reaches beyond literary biography to an exuberant cultural history. His voice is strong-at times personal in his fresh reading of Melville's life and work." -Maureen Howard

Biografía del autor:

Andrew Delbanco is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of many books on American Literature and his essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review and other journals.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Picador
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0330371088
• ISBN 13: 9780330371087
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384