Early in July 1997, scholars from around the world met in Volos, Greece, to discuss the work of American writer and international traveler Herman Melville. Offering insights into Melville the man and Melville the artist, the papers presented at this conference reflected a variety of interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational perspectives. With the participation of esteemed Melville critics and many young scholars gaining recognition for their innovative and incisive work in the area of Melville studies, this unique conference afforded all who attended an overview of current approaches to Melville and detailed thermatic examinations of his specific works and themes.

Herman Melville is a giant of American literature, whose novels are hailed as literary masterpieces. This eBook offers readers the complete works for the first time in digital print, as well as an array of bonus features. Features: * illustrated with many images relating to Melville’s life and works * annotated with concise introductions to the novels and other works * ALL the novels (except BILLY BUDD), with separate contents tables * MOBY-DICK and other works are presented with their original illustrations * images of how the novels first appeared, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * two short story collections * the complete poetry collections * the scarce poetry collection WEEDS AND WILDINGS, which Melville wrote for his wife - first time in digital print * uncollected poetry section, with rare works * separate CHRONOLOGICAL and ALPHABETICAL contents tables for the poetry – find that special poem easily! * includes Melville's complete essays, available nowhere else * bonus collection of letters by Melville - explore the writer's personal correspondence * boasts a special criticism section, with essays by writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf examining Melville’s contribution to literature * features Raymond Weaver's seminal biography on Melville, which sparked the great revival in the author * scholarly ordering of texts in chronological order and literary genres, allowing easy navigation around Melville’s immense oeuvre CONTENTS: The Novels Typee Omoo Mardi Redburn White-Jacket Moby-Dick Pierre Israel Potter The Confidence-Man Billy Budd, Sailor The Short Story Collections The Piazza Tales The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces The Short Stories List of the Short Stories The Poetry Collections Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land John Marr and Other Sailors Timoleon and Other Ventures Weeds and Wildings, with a Rose or Two Uncollected Poems The Poems List of Poems in Chronological Order List of Poems in Alphabetical Order The Essays Fragments from a Writing Desk Etchings of a Whaling Cruise Review Authentic Anecdotes of ‘Old Zack’ Mr Parkman’s Tour Cooper’s New Novel A Thought on Book-Binding Hawthorne and His Mosses The Letters Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville by Meade Minnigerode The Criticism The Best Sea-Story Ever Written by Archibald Macmechan Herman Melville’s Moby Dick by D. H. Lawrence Herman Melville’s Typee and Omoo by D. H. Lawrence Herman Melville by Virginia Woolf The Biography Herman Melville: Man, Mariner and Mystic by Raymond Weaver

In a series of 35 original essays, this companion demonstrates the relevance of Melville’s works in the twenty-first century. Presents 35 original essays by scholars from around the world, representing a range of different approaches to Melville Considers Melville in a global context, and looks at the impact of global economies and technologies on the way people read Melville Takes account of the latest and most sophisticated scholarship, including postcolonial and feminist perspectives Locates Melville in his cultural milieu, revising our views of his politics on race, gender and democracy Reveals Melville as a more contemporary writer than his critics have sometimes assumed

Presents a collection of criticism devoted to the work of American author Herman Melville.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.

John Bryant's book is a strong and significant argument for the centrality of the comic and repose in Melville's novels. The purpose of Melville and Repose is dual: to ground the uses of romantic humor in Melville in sensitive readings of contemporaneous European and American writings, and to offer a definitive account of the comic as the shaping force of Melville's narrative voice throughout the major phase of his literary career. Bryant argues that Melville fused a "rhetoric of geniality" and "picturesque sensibility" adopted from the British with a "rhetoric of deceit" borrowed from the American tall tale in order to create his own amiably cosmopolitan "rhetoric of aesthetic repose." Thorough research into American culture and recent Melville manuscript findings, an engaging style, and full, scholarly readings combine to make this historicist study a welcome addition to the libraries of Americanists and Melville scholars and enthusiasts.

The present book explores a variety of fundamental questions that all of us secretly share. Its twenty-one chapters, written by some of the world’s leading Melville and Conrad scholars, indicate possible directions of comparativist insight into the continuity and transformations of western existentialist thought between the 19th and 20th centuries. The existential philosophy of participation—so mistrustful of analytical categories—is epitomized by the lives and oeuvres of Melville and Conrad. Born in the immediacy of experience, this philosophy finds its expression in uncertain tropes and faith-based actions; rather than muffle the horror vacui with words, it plunges head first into liminality, where logos dissolves into a “positive nothing.” Unlike analytical philosophers, both Melville and Conrad refrain from talking about reality: they expose those who would listen to a first-hand experience of participation in an interpretive act. Employing literary tropes to denude the essence of the human condition, they allow their readers to transgress the limitations of language. Mistrustful of language, they accept the necessity of discourse which, to make sense, must be actively reshaped, endlessly questioned, and constantly revised. And if uncertainty is the only certainty available to us, our lowly human condition also necessitates compassion: an existential cure against the liquid, capricious reality we are afforded.