The sailor Ishmael gets employed at the whaling ship The Pequod, which is steered by the eccentric captain Ahab. The captain is obsessed with the giant white whale Moby Dick and his mad hunt on the dangerous animal brings all the crew's lives in danger.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American author whose books were based on his own experiences as a sailor. Today Herman Melville is world famous for his novel "Moby Dick" but in his time the novel was ill received and quickly forgotten. Not until many years after Herman Melville's death did "Moby Dick" get rediscovered and today it is considered one of the greatest classics in American literature.
The young adventurous sailors, Tommo and Toby, abandon ship and flee into the jungle of an island in French Polynesia. But their feelings of victory will be short-lived. Because they are about to run straight into the hands of the Typee, the most feared of the battling cannibal tribes. Inspired by his own adventures, twenty-five-year-old Herman Melville wrote `Typee' (1846) as a blend of creative memoir, cultural commentary, and good story-telling. He would later tell his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of `The Scarlet Letter') that "from my twenty-fifth year I date my life". Despite being mostly recognized, today, as the author of the classic novel, `Moby Dick', `Typee' was Melville's best-selling novel in his life-time.
Herman Melville's picturesque account of the Galapagos Islands will make you want to abandon all responsibilities and travel there to see for yourself. Melville wrote this series of "sketches" - or short prose works - from his own experiences sailing around the islands, yet at the same time they are clearly a product of his extraordinary imagination. Originally appearing in Putnam's Magazine in 1854, the novella was later published alongside five other Melville short stories in the collection `The Piazza Tales', which was very well received.
Ismael sente il bisogno di movimentare la sua vita. Lasciata Manhattan e raggiunto il porto di Nantucket, Massachusetts, decide di imbarcarsi sul Pequod, una baleniera. Li farà la conoscenza dell'equipaggio ma non del capitano, un tale Achab, che è presente sulla nave ma preferisce rimanere rinchiuso nella sua cabina e lasciare che siano gli altri tre ufficiali a comandare il Pequod. Il giorno che però si presenterà sul ponte della nave, con la sua gamba mozzata e una mascella di capodoglio come protesi, renderà chiara la vera missione della barca: la caccia alla balena bianca più pericolosa degli oceani, Moby Dick, la stessa ad avergli portato via la gamba durante la sua ultima missione.
Un classico della letteratura mondiale, Moby Dick è più di un romanzo. Un'opera enciclopedica, dove ossessione, fede e filosofia si fondono con azione e adrenalina, una storia che porta con sé la potenza del mare aperto, che delinea miraggi di destinazioni esotiche e porti lontani, sperduti oltre le cartine e le rotte convenzionali.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) è stato uno scrittore e poeta americano. Considerato dopo la sua morte uno dei padri fondatori della letteratura nordamericana, in vita non ebbe lo stesso successo. Tra i molti lavori svolti, quello di mozzo sulle navi mercantili e sulle baleniere del Pacifico e dell'Atlantico ha poi avuto grandissima risonanza nei suoi scritti. Tra le sue opere principali ricordiamo Moby Dick o La Balena, Bartleby lo Scrivano, Typee, Omoo e Giacchetta Bianca.
Tommo e Toby sono due giovani e avventurosi marinai che abbandonano la nave su cui stanno viaggiando e fuggono nella giungla di un'isola della Polinesia francese. L'ebrezza della fuga sarà però di breve durata perché i due finiranno dritti nelle grinfie dei Typee, una temibile tribù di cannibali.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) fu uno scrittore americano, noto soprattutto per "Moby Dick", il monumentale romanzo sulla caccia alle balene, all'epoca poco apprezzato ma oggi considerato uno dei grandi classici della letteratura mondiale.
"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story from 1852 by Herman Melville.
Bartleby is hired to work as a scrivener alongside two other clerks, Nippers and Turkey, for an unnamed, elderly lawyer in New York. At first, he produces high-quality work but suddenly his work ethic takes a turn, and Bartleby reply to every task he is given becomes "I would prefer not to."
The story was in part inspired by Emerson's essay "The Transcendentalist" and has been adapted to film twice: once in 1970, starring Paul Scofield, and again in 2001, starring Crispin Glover.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American writer, best known for his whaling novel, `Moby-Dick; or, The Whale' (1851), which was poorly received at the time but is considered a classic today.
Melville, along with authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, was part of the American Renaissance, a literary movement that aimed to provide literature for the American democracy.
