Author: Daniel Herman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 161146157X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
In Moby-Dick’s wide philosophical musings and central narrative arch, Herman finds a philosophy very closely aligned specifically with the original teachings of Zen Buddhism. In exploring the likelihood of this hitherto undiscovered influence, Herman looks at works Melville is either known to have read or that there is a strong likelihood of his having come across, as well as offering a more expansive consideration of Moby-Dick from a Zen Buddhist perspective, as it is expressed in both ancient and modern teachings. But not only does the book delve deeply into one of the few aspects of Moby-Dick’s construction left unexplored by scholars, it also conceives of an entirely new way of reading the greatest of American books—offering critical re-considerations of many of its most crucial and contentious issues, while focusing on what Melville has to teach us about coping with adversity, respecting ideological diversity, and living skillfully in a fickle, slippery world.
Author: Eric A. Kimmel
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
ISBN: 1466820454
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
AHOY! Come with us aboard the Pequod. We search for Moby Dick, the Great White Whale! Along with Captain Ahab, you'll meet danger face to face, hunting the fiercest creature the seas have ever known! Are you brave enough— and bold enough— for the adventure of your life? The award-winning author and illustrator team of Eric A. Kimmel and Andrew Glass introduce a new generation of readers to a magnificent and memorable retelling of Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby Dick.
Author: David Dowling
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587299062
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
"There have been a lot of crazy books about Melville and Moby-Dickiut this isn't one of them. Dowling's overarching analogy, between Ishmael's and Melville's obsessions and the annual marathon group-reading of Moby-Dick in New Bedford, makes perfect sense and generates illuminating analyses of the novel and its cultural contexts. It also lets him open his book up into a passionate exploration of how great literature can still play a vital role in people's lives today"-Damion Searls, editor, Thoreau's The Journal: 1837-1861 and Melville's; or The Whale --Book Jacket.
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780002241052
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Author: Richard J. King
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022651496X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Although Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is beloved as one of the most profound and enduring works of American fiction, we rarely consider it a work of nature writing—or even a novel of the sea. Yet Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard avers Moby-Dick is the “best book ever written about nature,” and nearly the entirety of the story is set on the waves, with scarcely a whiff of land. In fact, Ishmael’s sea yarn is in conversation with the nature writing of Emerson and Thoreau, and Melville himself did much more than live for a year in a cabin beside a pond. He set sail: to the far remote Pacific Ocean, spending more than three years at sea before writing his masterpiece in 1851. A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab’s Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville’s novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction. King then climbs to the crow’s nest, setting Melville in the context of the American perception of the ocean in 1851—at the very start of the Industrial Revolution and just before the publication of On the Origin of Species. King compares Ahab’s and Ishmael’s worldviews to how we see the ocean today: an expanse still immortal and sublime, but also in crisis. And although the concept of stewardship of the sea would have been entirely foreign, if not absurd, to Melville, King argues that Melville’s narrator Ishmael reveals his own tendencies toward what we would now call environmentalism. Featuring a coffer of illustrations and an array of interviews with contemporary scientists, fishers, and whale watch operators, Ahab’s Rolling Sea offers new insight not only into a cherished masterwork and its author but also into our evolving relationship with the briny deep—from whale hunters to climate refugees.
Author: Mark Wilson
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0734415753
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
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Book Description
From award-winning author and illustrator Mark Wilson, a stunning celebration of the beauty and majesty of whales. In the warm tropical waters off the north Australian coast, a very special whale is born: Migaloo, the only all-white humpback whale in the world. As he and his pod make their annual migration to Antarctica, Migaloo discovers the beauty, wonder and danger of a whale's journey. Mark Wilson's exquisite illustrations capture the grace and intelligence of these extraordinary creatures, who enchant whale-watchers around the world.
Author: Tim Severin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780349112336
Category : Cannibalism in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Herman Melville's novel MOBY DICK immortalised the concept of a battling white sperm whale, but did such a creature really exist? Acclaimed explorer and writer Tim Severin travelled to the islands of the Pacific to find out. From Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas archipelago to Pamilacan and Tonga, Severin compares myth with reality in a fascinating journey of discovery. Along the way he investigates the real extent of Melville's whaling experience, and unearths other potential sources for his famous story; encounters the extraordinary whale-jumpers, who even now make their living by leaping on the backs of whales to ram home their spears; and observes a retired harpooner re-enact the curious ballet of a kill -- transporting himself to his youth in the process, like a shaman from a forgotten age. Superb travel writing combined with personal and historical anecdote make this a hugely enjoyable and enlightening exploration of one of the ocean's enduring myths.
Author: Nathaniel Philbrick
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143123971
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
A “brilliant and provocative” (The New Yorker) celebration of Melville’s masterpiece—from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Valiant Ambition, and In the Hurricane's Eye One of the greatest American novels finds its perfect contemporary champion in Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick’s enlightening and entertaining tour through Melville’s classic. As he did in his National Book Award–winning bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick brings a sailor’s eye and an adventurer’s passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and, indeed, to all times. An ideal match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that this classic tale waits to be discovered anew. “Gracefully written [with an] infectious enthusiasm…”—New York Times Book Review
Author: Jeffrey Ford
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062679031
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen.” – Jonathan Carroll A bold and intriguing fabulist novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature—Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—from the critically acclaimed Edgar and World Fantasy award-winning author of The Girl in the Glass and The Shadow Year. At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the ocean’s depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harm—after hearing about Ahab’s demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them. Ahab’s pursuit leads him to The Gorgon’s Mirror, the sensationalist tabloid newspaper that employed Ishmael as a copy editor while he wrote the harrowing story of the ill-fated Pequod. In the penny press’s office, Ahab meets George Harrow, who makes a deal with the captain: the newspaperman will help Ahab navigate the city in exchange for the exclusive story of his salvation from the mouth of the great white whale. But their investigation—like Ahab’s own story—will take unexpected, dangerous, and ultimately tragic turns. Told with wisdom, suspense, a modicum of dry humor and horror, and a vigorous stretching of the truth, Ahab’s Return charts an inventive and intriguing voyage involving one of the most memorable characters in classic literature, and pays homage to one of the greatest novels ever written.
Author: Jeremiah N. Reynolds
Publisher: Sicpress.com
ISBN: 9780615795942
Category : Sperm whale
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Jeremiah N. Reynolds (1799-1858), an American newspaper editor, lecturer, explorer and author who became an influential advocate for scientific expeditions. Reynolds gathered first-hand observations of Mocha Dick, an albino sperm whale off Chile who bedeviled a generation of whalers for thirty years before succumbing to one. Mocha Dick survived many skirmishes (by some accounts at least 100) with whalers before he was eventually killed. In May 1839, The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine published Reynolds' "Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific," the inspiration for Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. In Reynolds' account, Mocha Dick was killed in 1838, after he appeared to come to the aid of a distraught cow whose calf had just been slain by the whalers. His body was 70 feet long and yielded 100 barrels of oil, along with some ambergris. He also had several harpoons in his body.
