1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910746091503321

Autore

Catalano Joseph S

Titolo

In Pursuit of Moby-Dick : Of Whales and Their Gods / / by Joseph S. Catalano

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer Nature Switzerland : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

3-031-40357-6

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (135 pages)

Disciplina

813.3

Soggetti

Literature, Modern - 19th century

America - Literatures

Oceanography

Nineteenth-Century Literature

North American Literature

Ocean Sciences

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: No Need to Rush -- Chapter 2: The Book Itself -- Chapter 3: Etymology and Extracts -- Chapter 4 A Tale Twice Told -- Chapter 5 Ishmael and Queequeg -- Chapter 6 Going Whaling and a Hint of Ahab -- Chapter 7 Ahab as Captain and Ahab as Ahab -- Chapter 8 Ahab and Moby Dick -- Chapter 9: The Town-Ho’s Story and Other Gams -- Chapter 10: Whales! Conversation, Art, Dining, Business, and Poetry -- Chapter 11: Ahab’s Leg and Ahab’s life -- Chapter 12: Conclusions, The Unity of Moby-Dick, and A Critical Reflectione.

Sommario/riassunto

This study presents Moby-Dick as a novel with three distinct but interconnecting stories: Ishmael’s, which he shares ten years after it has taken place; Ahab’s, which is Ishmael's account of the memorable captain of a whaling ship; and a third which centres on whales and whaling, which has not received significant critical attention. While each of these perspectives compete for prominence in the narrative, Ahab and Ishmael's stories have often distracted from the vital significance of the whaling narrative as what outlasts Ahab’s obsessive mission. Catalano rights this wrong by coming to a strikingly original and



thought-provoking conclusion which becomes the heart of the book's argument: “the unity of Melville’s book comes, first, from the way the numerous literary, philosophical, and religious reflections are rooted in those magnificent beings, whales and in the men and ships that pursue them, and, second, in the way these reflections illuminate our own lives.” Joseph S. Catalono is professor emeritus of philosophy at Kean University, USA. Some of his previous publications include Thinking Matter: Consciousness From Aristotle to Putnam and Sartre (2000), Reading Sartre: An Invitation…(2010), and The Saint and the Atheist: Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul Sartre (2021).