Herman Melville

Benito Cereno (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

With its intense mix of mystery, adventure, and a surprise ending, Benito Cereno at first seems merely a provocative example from the genre Herman Melville created with his early best-selling novels of the sea. However, most Melville scholars consider it his most sophisticated work, and many, such as novelist Ralph Ellison, have hailed it as the most piercing look at slavery in all of American literature. Based on a real life incident-the character names remain unchanged-Benito Cereno tells what happens when an American merchant ship comes upon a mysterious Spanish ship where the nearly all-black crew and their white captain are starving and yet hostile to offers of help. Melville's most focused political work, it is rife with allusions (a ship named after Santo Domingo, site of the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture), analogies (does the good-hearted yet obtuse American captain refer to the American character itself?), and mirroring images that deepen our reflections on human oppression and its resultant depravities. It is, in short, a multi-layered masterpiece that rewards repeated readings, and deepens our appreciation of Melville's genius.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Classica Libris
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Dezember 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788829570522
• Artikelnr.: 54740016

Autorenporträt

Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. Herman Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic and the abundance of allusion extends to scripture, myth, philosophy, literature and the visual arts.