Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

Seen as an artistic failure or an overgrown children’s book until the 1920s, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is now widely accepted as the greatest single work of American literature with indelible scenes, characters, and storylines. This course will provide an intensive focus on the book, examining its characters and themes closely while also considering the cultural background of Melville’s America, divided by issues of race and expansion and facing a deepening political rift that would lead to civil war. Melville was that rare writer who was both supremely talented and laden with knowledge of a highly technical subject, in this case whaling and voyaging. This makes for a book like no other.

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