Benito Cereno / Edition 1

by Herman Melville

Overview

This version of Benito Cereno presents the novel in a readable and affordable format with light and supportive annotations and supporting editorial content to help you connect with the central themes of the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312452421
Publisher:	Bedford/St. Martin's
Publication date:	12/19/2006
Series:	Bedford College Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.15(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Wyn Kelley is a senior lecturer on the Literature Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of Meville’s City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York (1996) and of essays in collections such as Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts (1991), Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays (1997), The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville (1998), Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick (2006), Melville and Women (2006), and Hawthorne and Melville: Writing Relationship (2007). She has edited Blackwell Publisher’s A Companion to Herman Melville (2006) and coedited with Jill Barnum and Christopher Sten Whole Oceans Away: Melville and the Pacific (2006). She serves as associate editor of the Melville Society journal Leviathan and as a founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project.

Date of Birth:

August 1, 1819

Date of Death:

September 28, 1891

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended the Albany Academy in Albany, New York, until age 15

Table of Contents

Preface

Chronology: The Life of Herman Melville

An Introduction to Benito Cereno

Herman Melville, Benito Cereno

Amasa Delano, From A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: Comprising Three Voyages Round the World, Together with a Voyage of Survey and Discovery in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental Islands

Suggestions for Further Reading and Research

Glossary of Literary Terms

About the Editor

Editorial Reviews

The Broadview Press edition of Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’ is vital for teaching, research, and exploring the power of American short fiction. From abolitionist writings to texts about the Haitian Revolution to reflections by Melville’s contemporaries, Brian Yothers has reassembled crucial materials for a profound journey into Melville’s fictional universe. Whether you are interested in the historical context that inspired Melville or the philosophical questions that saturate his art, this captivating edition contains all of the major materials and literary artifacts. If you’re teaching, rereading, or even discovering ‘Benito Cereno’ for the first time, this edition is a fresh and fully updated take on Melville’s classic.” — Christopher Freeburg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

From the Publisher

In our own time of terror and torture, Benito Cereno has emerged as the most salient of Melville’s works: a tale of desperate men in the grip of a vengeful fury that those whom they hate cannot begin to understand.”

Andrew Delbanco

Superficially, this is a story of slavery and mutiny on the high seas, but beneath the adventure-charged plot lies Melville’s examination of that subject which so fascinated him: the confrontation of extreme forces of good and evil in the universe.”

Masterpieces of World Literature

The noblest short story in American literature.”

American author and short-story anthologist Edward J. O’Brien