Herman Melville

The huge range of critical and academic debate about this monster of a novel confirms Moby-Dick 's status as a vital and exhilarating exploration of the role of American ideology in defining modern consciousness. This Columbia Critical Guide starts with extracts from Melville's own letters and essays and from early reviews of Moby-Dick that set the terms for later critical evaluations. Subsequent chapters deal with the Melville Revival of the 1920s and the novel's central place in the establishment, growth, and reassessment of American Studies in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters examine postmodern New Americanist readings of the text, and how these provide new models for thinking about American culture.