Hermann Melville "Moby Dick"

CONTENTS:
Introduction …………………………………………..……..……2

1. 
   Hermann Melville “Moby Dick”
   

1.1 The evolution of romantic ocean imagery in “Moby Dick”…4

1.2. Approaching The Truth Through Oceanic Metaphor……..…13

1.3 The Ocean as Heterotopia…...…………………………….......17

Conclusion ………………………………………………….…….21

Bibliography……………………………………………….....…...22


Introduction

The actuality of the course paper

In 1839, nineteen-year-old Herman Melville first set out to sea on board the St. Lawrence, a merchant ship bound for England. His biographer Hershel Parker writes that more than he wanted to glimpse any part of Europe, Herman wanted to see the Pacific‖. Although dire economic circumstances and lack of adequate education were decisive factors in his embarking on a career as a sailor, he had grown up hearing stories of sea adventures from his uncle and cousin and was eager, as Ishmael is in the first chapter of Moby-Dick, ―to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts‖. From 1839 through 1844, Melville worked and lived at sea in many different capacities, including working aboard a whaling ship, which, in the words of Ishmael in ―The Advocate, became Melville‘s ―Yale College and [his] Harvard‖ (Moby-Dick).