Review by Choice Review
Six fresh, previously unpublished essays on Melville's Moby Dick written for the Cambridge series ``The American Novel.'' They are designed to represent both the current state of critical scholarship on Melville and his most famous novel, but also, less obviously thank goodness, the changing nature of criticism itself. Richard Brodhead (Yale), who writes the fine introductory piece, has gathered essays from a mixture of old hands and new stars. All six authors sail the Melvillean seas with a full knowledge of what earlier critics have observed and each adds significantly to the discussion of Melville's literary accomplishment and its relationship to American culture. Some readers will be particularly interested in James McIntosh's exploration of the structural effects of the multiple quests in the narrative on the ambiguities of Moby Dick as well as Bryan Wolf's parallels between the images of the Hudson River landscape paintings and Melville's language. All of the essays are worthwhile and can be highly recommended to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.-A.E. Jones Jr., Drew University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
