Read complete books and articles on: Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Melville, Herman - 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature.

Early Life and Works

Melville, Herman - 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature.

Early Life and Works

Born into an impoverished family of distinguished Dutch and English colonial descent, Melville was 12 when his father died. He left school at 15, worked at a variety of jobs, and in 1839 signed on as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool, an experience reflected in his romance Redburn. In 1841–42 he spent 18 months on a whaler, but intolerable hardships on board caused him and a companion to escape from the ship at the Marquesas Islands. The two were captured by a tribe of cannibals, by whom they were well treated. After being rescued by an Australian whaler, Melville spent some time in Tahiti and other Pacific islands before shipping home in 1844.

The immediate results of his experiences were Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847), as well as Redburn (1849), all fresh, exuberant, and immensely popular romances. In 1847, Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts. The popularity of his books brought him prosperity, business trips to Europe, and admission to literary circles in New York City. In 1850 he bought a farm near Pittsfield, Mass., and became friends with his neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne. The allegorical implications evident in his romances Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1849) and White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850) reached full development in Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851).

Moby-Dick

The story of a deranged whaling captain's obsessive voyage to find and destroy the great white whale that had ripped off his leg, the novel is at once an exciting sea story, a sociological critique of various American class and racial prejudices, a repository of information about whales and whaling, and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of good and evil, of man and his fate. The novel is heavily symbolic, and many critical formulations have been made as to the meaning of its central symbol, the great white whale Moby-Dick himself. Moby-Dick is greatly enhanced by Melville's rhythmic, rhetorical prose style. Although it is now considered one of the greatest of all novels, Moby-Dick was misunderstood and ill-received in its time. Readers were confused by the book's symbolism, and they failed to grasp Melville's complex view of the world.

Later Works and Life

Like Moby-Dick,Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852), a psychological study of guilt and frustrated good, was disregarded by the public. Disheartened by debts, ill health, and the failure to win an audience, Melville became absorbed in mysticism. He was unable to accept the optimism of transcendentalism, for he was always able to see the cruel as well as the beautiful in nature. Although he searched for a faith that would satisfy his yearning for the Absolute, he never found one. Melville continued to produce important works in The Piazza Tales (1856), a collection which includes "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby the Scrivener," and The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (1857), a pessimistic satire on materialism.

Melville was forced to sell his farm, and in 1866 he secured a poorly paying position in New York City as a district inspector of customs, a job he held for 19 years. His late works include the volumes of poetry Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) and John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) and the long poem Clarel (1876). However, he wrote no more fiction until his last years when he composed the posthumously published novella Billy Budd, Foretopman (1924), the tragedy of an innocent. Melville died in poverty and obscurity. Although neglected for many years, he was rediscovered around 1920 and has been enthusiastically studied by critics and scholars ever since. Many of his unpublished works were issued posthumously, notably The Apple Tree Table (1922), a collection of magazine sketches; Journal of a Visit to London and the Continent (1948); and Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant (1955).

Bibliography

See the authoritative ed. of his writings (15 vol., ed. by H. M. Hayford et al., 1968–93); his letters (ed. by M. R. Davis and W. H. Gilman, 1960); biographies by N. Arvin (1950, repr. 1972, 2002), L. Howard (1981), G. Wolff (1987), H. Parker (2 vol., 1996–2002), L. Robertson-Lorant (1996), E. Hardwick (2000), and A. Delbanco (2005); studies by M. Rogin (1983), N. Tolchin (1988), and W. Dimock (1989).

Show Excerpt Only

11 of the Best Books and Articles on: Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Four Short Novels ("Benito Cereno" begins on p. 105) » Read Now
by Herman Melville. 281 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
2.

Law in Art: Melville's Major Fiction and Nineteenth-Century American Law (Chap. 7 "'Benito Cereno' and the Failure of Law") » Read Now
by Susan Weiner. 198 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
3.

Law in Literature: Legal Themes in Novellas ("Benito Cereno" begins on p. 80) » Read Now
by Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette. 550 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
4.

The American in Charity: "Benito Cereno" and Gothic Anti-Sentimentality, in Studies in American Fiction » Read Now
by Peter Coviello. 25 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

Melville's Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays (Chap. 7 "Slavery and Empire: Melville's 'Benito Cereno'") » Read Now
by John Bryant, Robert Milder. 419 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Melville's Evermoving Dawn contains some of the best writing and thinking on Melville today. Represented here are scholars young and old, traditionalists and new historicists, who gathered at several conferences and venues throughout 1991, the centennial of Herman Melville's death. Meetings occured...
Read More

Melville's Evermoving Dawn contains some of the best writing and thinking on Melville today. Represented here are scholars young and old, traditionalists and new historicists, who gathered at several conferences and venues throughout 1991, the centennial of Herman Melville's death. Meetings occured in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (where Melville wrote Moby-Dick, Pierre, and other works), New York City during Melville week (Sept. 22-28), and Washington, DC, at the Theater of the National Archives. The essays survey the past and present of Melville studies and suggest directions for the future.
Show less
6.

The Sign of the Cannibal: Melville and the Making of a Postcolonial Reader (Chap. 4 "Walking Shadows: 'Benito Cereno' and the Colonial Stage") » Read Now
by Geoffrey Sanborn. 256 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
7.

Narrative Ethics ("Benito Cereno: Shadows and Light" begins on p. 207) » Read Now
by Adam Zachary Newton. 336 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The ethics of literature, formalists have insisted, resides in the moral quality of a character, a story, perhaps the relation between author and reader. But in the wake of deconstruction and various forms of criticism focusing on difference, the ethical question has been freshly engaged by literary...
Read More

The ethics of literature, formalists have insisted, resides in the moral quality of a character, a story, perhaps the relation between author and reader. But in the wake of deconstruction and various forms of criticism focusing on difference, the ethical question has been freshly engaged by literary studies, and to this approach Adam Newton brings a startling new thrust. His book makes a compelling case for understanding narrative as ethics. Assuming an intrinsic and necessary connection between the two, Newton explores the ethical consequences of telling stories and fictionalizing character, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in the process. He treats these relations as defining properties of prose fiction, of particular import in nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. Newton's fresh and nuanced readings cover a wide range of authors and periods, from Charles Dickens to Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes, from Herman Melville to Richard Wright, from Joseph Conrad and Henry James to Sherwood Anderson and Stephen Crane. An original work of theory as well as a deft critical performance, Narrative Ethics also stakes a claim for itself as moral inquiry. To that end, Newton braids together the ethical-philosophical projects of Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Cavell, and Mikhail Bakhtin as a kind of chorus for his textual analyses - an elegant bridge between philosophy's ear and literary criticism's voice. His work will generate enormous interest among scholars and students of English and American literature, as well as specialists in narrative and literary theory, hermeneutics, and contemporary philosophy.
Show less
8.

Ideology and Classic American Literature (Chap. 16 "That Hive of Subtlety: 'Benito Cereno' and the Liberal Hero") » Read Now
by Sacvan Bercovitch, Myra Jehlen. 452 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This volume of essays brings together some of the best work by Americanists concerned with the problem of ideology and its bearing upon American literature and culture. It projects neither a particular ideological view nor a particular view of ideology. On the contrary: these essays highlight the...
Read More

This volume of essays brings together some of the best work by Americanists concerned with the problem of ideology and its bearing upon American literature and culture. It projects neither a particular ideological view nor a particular view of ideology. On the contrary: these essays highlight the many uses of ideology as a critical term, and, in doing so, they open new avenues of inquiry, new forums for discussion. They also demonstrate that, far from being parochial or reductive, ideological analysis is integral to considerations of formal structure and crucial to an understanding of the relations between literature and culture. The authors are leading Americanists of the past three or four generations. Their essays deal variously with theoretical issues, with questions of theme, genre, and perspective, and with interpretations of particular authors and texts. The editors of the volume provide a general introduction to the nature and development of ideological critique, and an afterword that discusses the coherence of the volume as a whole and its implications for further study.
Show less
9.

Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies ("The Blind Leading the Blind: The Racial Gaze as Plot Dilemma in 'Benito Cereno' and 'The Heroic Slave'" begins on p. 205) » Read Now
by Henry B. Wonham. 300 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
10.

On Melville ("Melville and the Negro: From Typee to 'Benito Cereno'" begins on p. 135) » Read Now
by Louis J. Budd, Edwin H. Cady. 277 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
11.

Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays ("Benito Cereno" begins on p. 116) » Read Now
by Richard Chase. 184 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library