HermanMelville-美国文学教程.ppt

Herman Melville 1819---1891 Nationality: American Occupation: novelist, short story writer, teacher, sailor, lecturer, poet, customs inspector Melvilles Major Works Sea-travel experience Early life ---ceaseless travel on sea. First naval voyage in 1839 to Liverpool. Sail for years as a whaler and in the US Navy. In 1841, went to the South Sea on a whaling ship, where he gained the information about whaling that he later used in Moby-Dick. Writing Style Realistic ＆ Symbolic Philosophical ＆Intellectual Moby -Dick  symbolism  The voyage: Itself is a metaphor for the search for the ultimate truth of experience Moby -Dick  symbolism Moby Dick: To the author, it symbols nature, it is complex, unfathomable and dangerous; To the captain Ahab, it is evil, is a wall. To the narrator, Ishmael, it is a mystery. As a part of the natural world, it represents the destruction of the environment Moby -Dick  symbolism Starbuck: the prime symbol of good Ahab: with an overwhelming obsession to kill the whale-evil, but with a baleful fire become himself an evil in his thirst to kill evil. Its whiteness: a paradoxical color, signifying death and corruption, purity, innocence, and youth. * * Life story 1819, born in New York City into an established merchant family (3rd of 8 children). 1832, father died, bankrupt and apparently insane. 1837, as a cabin boy on a merchant ship for Liverpool. 1839-41, shipped out in on Acushnet to the Atlantic and the South Seas. He later said, “A whale ship was my Harvard and Yale. Typee (1846) 《泰皮》 Omoo (1847) 《欧穆》 Redburn (1849) 《雷得本》 Mardi (1849) 《玛地》政治宗教寓言 White-Jacket (1850) 《白外衣》 Moby Dick (1851) 《白鲸》 Pierre (1852) 《皮埃尔》 Billy Budd《比利·巴德》 (手稿1891, 未完成；直到1924年才出版)  Going out to sea His marriage His friendship with Hawthorne Three important things in his life: Friendship with Hawthorne Meeting Hawthorne in the summer