Herman Melville : MOBY DICK

a critical study

by : P.G. Rama Rao

ISBN 978-81-7977-527-1

Price : Rs. 55.00

pp. : 90 + 14

P.G. Rama Rao retired from the P.G. Dept. of English, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, in 1995, after a long and distinguished innings as a teacher of English and American Literature.

His Ph.D. thesis on Hemingway’s narrative technique and his article on “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” were highly acclaimed in Sixteen Modern American Authors (Duke Univ. Press, 1974). A Fulbright Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the University of Massachusetts, he studied the Hemingway manuscripts in John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 1981-82 and 1993, taught the Hemingway course in the University of Massachusetts, and delivered lectures in several American universities. In 1986, on a British Council grant, he visited Oxford and Edinburgh universities, where he delivered a series of lectures. He participated in the MLA Convention and the Hemingway Conference in New York in December 1981, and in the Second and Third International Hemingway Conferences in Italy (1986) and Austria (1988) respectively.

Dr. Rao supervised the doctoral research of many scholars and published a large number of research papers and articles, some of which were included in learned anthologies. Among his publications are the Poetic Rapture (1963), Ernest Hemingway: A Study in Narrative Technique (1980), Narrative Technique in British and American Fiction (1986), Scapes (Poems-1992), A Novel- The Wave and the Hill (1993), The Critic’s Eye (1993). Shri Brahma Vaivartha Purana (2008), My Days in Tulasi Kshetra (2009) and On the Other Side of the Globe (2013).

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is widely acknowledged as a great classic in English letters. According to Somerset Maugham, the famous British writer, it is one of the ten great novels of the world. I taught this novel to successive generations of post-graduate students and enjoyed the experience every time. Later, I had the opportunity of writing correspondence lessons on this novel for the Distance Education Department of Burdwan University a few years ago.

I am thankful to the Director of the Distance Education Programme, Burdwan University for granting me permission to revise the lessons and publish them in the form of a book for the benefit of a larger and wider readership. This book is designed to cater to the needs of the students, teachers, and research scholars engaged in a study of American literature in general and Herman Melville in particular. Besides, this book will serve as a useful handbook for the teachers and students of this great novel.

List of Contents:

Introduction

The American Fiction of the 19th Century

Herman Melville’s Life & Work

Moby Dick: Special Introduction

Themes in Moby Dick

What happens in Moby Dick?

Characters

Critical Approaches

The Style of Moby Dick

Suggested University Questions

Select Bibliography