The Essex and the Whale: Melville's Leviathan Library and the Birth of Moby-Dick
320
The Essex and the Whale: Melville's Leviathan Library and the Birth of Moby-Dick
320eBook
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Overview
The notorious 1820 sinking of the whaleship Essex inspired Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, as recounted in Nathaniel Philbrick's bestselling book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex—now a major motion picture. But how exactly did Melville transmute the historic tragedy of the Essex into what is arguably the "Great American Novel"? Here, for the first time, R.D. Madison collects together Melville's personal "library" of whaling and whale-lore into a single volume and presents these primary sources in a way that readers can readily see how a horrific whaling tragedy became a literary masterpiece.
But where did Moby-Dick begin? Prompted by sailor-author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Melville supplemented his own firsthand experience as a whaleman in the South Pacific with "libraries" of books that he "swum through" to create his whaling masterpiece. Scholars and lay readers alike have long wondered how he did it, and over the past 60 years, a very tight theory of inspiration and creation has emerged. It is very likely wrong.
This volume gathers together for the first time all of the main texts that Melville encountered, including the accounts of the unique sinking of the Essex by a sperm whale that provided the climax for Moby-Dick. Melville scholar R. D. Madison examines what critics have said about Melville's response to the sinking and offers the challenging thesis that Melville did not even begin the book at all until spurred on by Dana in the spring of 1850.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9798216040484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 03/28/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 7 - 17 Years |
About the Author
R. D. Madison is professor emeritus of English at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Swimming through Libraries
Further Reading
A Note on the Texts
Illustrations
Herman Melville, "Chapter 45: The Affidavit," Moby-Dick or the Whale (1851)
Owen Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex (1821)
Jeremiah N. Reynolds, "Mocha Dick; Or the White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" (1839)
From "Gallapagos Islands; Prizes," David Porter, Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (1815)
From Francis Allyn Olmsted, Incidents of a Whaling Voyage (1841)
From Frederick Debell Bennett, Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the Globe (1840)
From Charles H. Barnard, A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Capt. Charles H. Barnard, in a Voyage round the World (1836)
From Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1846)
From J. Ross Browne, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (1846)
From Charles Wilkes, "Currents and Whaling," Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1844)
From Pierre Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary (1710)
From James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot; A Tale of the Sea (1824) and The Sea Lions; or, the Lost Sealers (1849)
From Nathaniel Ames, A Mariner's Sketches (1830)
From "Whales," Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1843)
From Henry Trumbull, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (1824)
C. Hamilton Smith, "Whale," in John Kitto, Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature (1845)
From William Scoresby, Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery (1820)
From Thomas Beale, The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839)
From James Colnett, A Voyage to the South Atlantic and round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean, for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries (1798)
From Horatio Hastings Weld, Ribs and Trucks, from Davy's Locker (1842)
From William Dampier, A New Voyage round the World (1729)
From Joseph C. Hart, Miriam Coffin, or the Whale-Fishermen (1834)
From Obed Macy, The History of Nantucket (1835)
From Henry T. Cheever, The Whale and His Captors; or, The Whaleman's Adventures, and the Whale's Biography (1850)
Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876)
Herman Melville's Sea Routes
Index
What People are Saying About This
“Herman Melville tells us that he ‘swam through libraries’ in writing Moby-Dick. For the first time, Madison, an editor of the definitive Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, has gathered excerpts from all the whaling texts used by Melville and presents a new provocative theory of the book’s composition. For anyone intrigued by whaling, Moby-Dick, or the tragedy of the whaleship Essex, ‘stove by a whale’ in 1820, this is a must-read.”
"R.D. Madison's anthology presents a fascinating display of the whaling literature from which Melville drew in the making of Moby-Dick. In establishing the contexts of the sources and their various contributions to the novel, Madison develops an extensive and revealing analysis of the process of Melville's art. The Melville scholar will find his discussion of the inception of Moby-Dickto be particularly insightful."
"By expertly compiling and editing Melville's 'fish documents,' Robert Madison provides a valuable and long overdue resource for readers fascinated by the origins of Moby-Dick in the story of the Essex and other sources. Contents of the collection range from writings by obligatory authorities-Owen Chase, Thomas Beale, William Scoresby-to delightfully obscure, out-of-the-way forms of information in documents now long forgotten. After nearly a century of published scholarship on Moby-Dick, with this volume readers now have convenient access to the 'cetological chowder' Melville mined for his masterwork of whales and whaling."
"Herman Melville's accomplishment in Moby-Dick was unexampled but hardly unprepared for. In this rich collection of the earlier work that helped shape Melville's subject and his own approach to it—from the Essex narrative of Owen Chase to the fiction of Cooper and the official report of the U.S. Exploring Expedition by Charles Wilkes—Robert Madison has gathered the key parts of Melville's rich whaling library."