Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece, is undoubtedly one of the greatest American novels. But what kind of book is it? It is, in one light, a revenge tragedy: the thrilling tale of the exploits of the monomaniacal Captain Ahab and his quest to kill the white whale that chewed off his leg. But the book is much more than this: it is, as Bob Dylan puts it, a novel in which ‘everything is mixed in’. This course will guide students through the expansive oceans of this encyclopaedic novel and discover how Melville’s tale of obsession, fate, and the search for the impossible remains frighteningly relevant to our own times.
We will explore how Melville explores themes as various as racial politics, ecology, economics, sexuality, sin, God, and knowledge. The course will also give ample opportunity for close reading of Melville’s text, examining the novel’s richly allusive, neologistic, polyphonic prose and considering it as a ‘book of books’ that absorbs and repurposes elements of Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost and the King James Bible. Finally, the course will also situate Melville’s text in its time and consider relevant biographical and historical factors.
Learning outcomes
- To understand Moby-Dick within its historical, literary, and biographical context;
- To approach Moby-Dick from multiple angles, including (but not limited to) considerations of its treatment of race, sexuality, religion, ethics, and ecology;
- To be able to produce sensitive and insightful readings of Melville’s prose based on close attention to the text.
