美国文学_赫尔曼·麦尔维尔课件.pptVIP

Herman Melville Herman Melville (1819-1891) Novelist Poet Herman Melville Life Story Literary Characteristics Reading Moby Dick Life Story Childhood Career Childhood Birth: New York City; August 1, 1819 Grandson of two Revolutionary War Heroes Father’s view of his son Death of father in 1832 Father’s Opinion of Him “backward in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension…of a docile and amiable disposition” Career Various jobs: bank clerk; clerk in a cap and fur store; farmhand; schoolteacher, sailor, whaler Significant Events Arrowhead Clerk in New York Custom house for the last 20 years of his life Death in 1891 Significant Events Going out to sea Marriage Friendship with Hawthorne Favorite Writers Sea Experiences “Cabin boy” of St. Lawrence in 1839 Whaler Acushnet in 1841 Whaler Lucy Ann in 1842 Whaler Charles Henry Seaman on United States in 1843 Marriage 1847 Elizabeth Shaw (daughter of Chief Justice of Boston ) Extravagant lifestyle Writing for money Friendship with Hawthorne Meeting Hawthorne in the summer of 1850 Influenced by his black vision Revising Moby Dick Dedicating Moby Dick to Hawthorne “He will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists… He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his disbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other… He has a very high and noble nature.” Favorite Writers Emerson Hawthorne Thomas Carlyle Shelley Thomas Browne Shakespeare Herman Melvilles Obituary Notices Melville died at home, of a heart attack, shortly after midnight on September 28, 1891. He was seventy-two years old; his last novel, The Confidence-Man, had been published more than three decades earlier. As the following notices suggest, he had been almost totally forgotten by all but a small group of admirers in Great Britain and the United States. In an article written about a year before his death (included below), columnist Edward W. Bok went so far as to state that most of those who cou