The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville

The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville provides timely, critical essays on Melville's classic works. The essays have been specially commissioned for this volume and provide a complete overview of Melville's career. Melville's major novels are discussed, along with a range of his short fiction and poetry, including neglected works ripe for rediscovery. The volume includes essays on such new topics as Melville and oceanic studies, Melville and animal studies, and Melville and the planetary, along with a number of essays that focus on form and aesthetics. Written at a level both challenging and accessible, this New Companion brings together a team of leading international scholars to offer students of American literature the most comprehensive introduction available to Melville's art.

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology of Melville's life; Texts and abbreviations; Introduction Robert S. Levine; 1. Melville and the nonhuman world Geoffrey Sanborn; 2. Melville and oceanic studies Hester Blum; 3. Democracy and Melville's aesthetics Jennifer Greiman; 4. White-Jacket: telling who is - and ain't - a slave Jeannine Marie DeLombard; 5. Reading Moby-Dick Samuel Otter; 6. Pierre, life history, and the obscure Wyn Kelley; 7. 'Bartleby' and the magazine fiction Graham Thompson; 8. Skepticism and The Confidence-Man Maurice S. Lee; 9. Melville the poet in the postbellum world Elizabeth Renker; 10. Judgment in Billy Budd Gregg Crane; 11. Melville and queerness without character Michael Snediker; 12. Melville with pictures Elisa Tamarkin; 13. Melville's planetary compass Timothy Marr; 14. Wound, beast, revision: versions of the Melville meme John Bryant; 15. Cold war allegories and the politics of criticism Christopher Castiglia; Selected bibliography; Index.

Robert S. Levine is Professor of English and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Dislocating Race and Nation (2008) and the editor of a number of volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville (1998). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation.