1 gen 1819 anni - Herman Melville is born

Descrizione:

(1819 -1891)
Long undervalued career.
3rd of 8 siblings.
Father: a trader with a tendency to poor business - lead to debt and bankruptcy and father's death.
Formative years: well read and interested in the works of W. Shakespeare.

Worked as a SAILOR for 10 years (merchant, navy, whaling, civilian) - influenced most of his adventure novels (portrayals of adventures such as Typee or Omoo.)

but...MOBY-DICK (1851) was a turning point in his literary style, although the novel wasn't at all acknowledged during his times. Bad criticism since it did not follow the conventions of the aesthetics of the time. At the same time, there is an immense urge to weave an authentic american literary voice, distanced from the European lands and currents and at the mercy of new land exploration, revolutionary, and early democratic social values.

Despite Moby-Dick was not well reviewed in its times, in the early 20th century was glorified and reborn as THE GREAT american novel. It was able to narrate an expansive epic about a whaling expedition through the eyes of an obsessive Capitan who was determined to kill the white whale no matter what.

Characteristics of Moby-Dick:

- Innovative prose STYLE: constant shifts in style: Multiple narrative styles: a voyage filled with essays, detailed and poetic descriptions, philosophical questions, anatomy accounts...

- Ahead of his time: Unlike the romantic tradition of the time, Moby-Dick challenged the prose aesthetics of conventional narratives.

- Idea of the America Hero: RADICAL INDIVIDUALISATION. Lonely explorers outside society and convention: facing risk and sometimes destruction to pursue a metaphysical self-discovery.

- Shaped the literary canon: the nove is the in-between of a life and death encounter with a whale.

- Lineal narrative, like a road novel, in a chronological order.

- Psychological - Capitan Ahab: The Light (humanity-realistic & detailed descriptions ) and Darkness (destire to kill the whale, fatal end, dead and shipwreck)

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