-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales (Oxford World's Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
`Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.' So wrote Melville of Billy Budd, Sailor, among the greatest of his works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. As the critic E. L. Grant Watson writes, `In this short history of the impressment and hanging of a handsome sailor-boy are to be discovered problems as profound as those which puzzle us in the pages of the Gospels.' Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. The passion it has aroused in its readers over the years is a measure of how deeply it addresses some of the fundamental questions of experience that every age must reexamine for itself. The selection in this volume represents the best of Melville's shorter fiction, and uses the most authoritative texts. The eight shorter tales included here were composed during Melville's years as a magazine writer in the mid 1850's and establish him, along with Hawthorne and Poe, as the greatest American story writer of his age. Several of the tales - Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids - are acknowledged masterpieces of their genres. All show Melville a master of irony, point-of-view, and tone whose fables ripple out in nearly endless circles of meaning.
About the Author
Robert Milder is Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He is editor of Critical Essays on Melville's `Billy Budd, Sailor' and the author of Reimagining Thoreau.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
I am a rather elderly man. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am a rather elderly man. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Three of the tales here are now recognised as classics.Bartleby the Scrivener is a long short story, while Benito Cereno and Billy Budd are nearer to novellas, all three are breathtaking in their scope; the other stories are more ephemeral, and of more limited interest.Bartleby is a story of urban alienation and effectively provides a case study of a man irretrievably crushed by the inexorable demands of nineteenth century capitalism, through the eyes of his ineffectual but well meaning employer. In Benito Cereno, the eponymous Spanish captain has to keep up the appearance of being in charge of his ship whereas he has actually been deposed by a slave mutiny. Billy Budd is the innocent victim of presecution by a sadistic naval officer.
The power of Melville's imagery is striking; in Benito Cereno, there is the nightmare vision of the skeleton of the slave owner which has been put in place of the ship's figurehead by the mutineers, in Billy Budd, the visual and metaphorical analogy of Billy's execution with Christ's crucification.
In each story, Melville considers grand themes; individual will,the nature of and abuse of power between men and the plight of the individual in a hostile and godless world. Whilst he was almost completely unrecognised by the reading public in his own time, since the 1920s, Melville has been considered one of the greatest of all American authors, precocious in his consideration of the disabling effects of racism and the horrors of slavery and in identifying the eroticism of power. This posthumous acclaim initially resulted from the rediscovery of his greatest work, Moby Dick, but subsequently has been extended to include the three stories reviewed here.
The power of Melville's imagery is striking; in Benito Cereno, there is the nightmare vision of the skeleton of the slave owner which has been put in place of the ship's figurehead by the mutineers, in Billy Budd, the visual and metaphorical analogy of Billy's execution with Christ's crucification.
In each story, Melville considers grand themes; individual will,the nature of and abuse of power between men and the plight of the individual in a hostile and godless world. Whilst he was almost completely unrecognised by the reading public in his own time, since the 1920s, Melville has been considered one of the greatest of all American authors, precocious in his consideration of the disabling effects of racism and the horrors of slavery and in identifying the eroticism of power. This posthumous acclaim initially resulted from the rediscovery of his greatest work, Moby Dick, but subsequently has been extended to include the three stories reviewed here.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Okay, I will be the first to admit that Melville will always be an acquired taste, rather like a good Single Malt, and a lot of people steer clear of his works. Since I first read 'Moby Dick' for the first time many years ago I have come to more of his works. Never really recognised in his lifetime for the genius he was he was only rediscovered in the 1920s. Reading his works today we can only wonder why he didn't do that well when he was alive, and can only conclude that he was just too way ahead for his time. I think that albeit at such a late date he would have found gratification in the fact that he is recognised for what he was.
Even if you have shied away from Melville before you may want to give this book of short stories a go. All the stories in this book are now rightly considered masterpieces and although Melville was more of a novel writer he shows that he can write a short story as good as the best proponents of the art. Containing nine stories this volume shows the power and depth of Melville's writing, revealing how subtle and ironical he can be. All these tales are unforgettable and I must personally admit that however many times I read 'Bartleby, The Scrivener' I never tire of it. The same can apply with all these stories. As usual with all Melville's works these tales are all slighly ambigious, but this just adds to them and as you go through life and mature and come back to them you find something new in them.
If you are a fan of short stories then you should have this book, and if reading for you is a pleasure then read this, you won't be disappointed. Also included in an appendix which shows the source for the story 'Benito Cereno', and Robert Milder's introduction is also well worth a read.
Even if you have shied away from Melville before you may want to give this book of short stories a go. All the stories in this book are now rightly considered masterpieces and although Melville was more of a novel writer he shows that he can write a short story as good as the best proponents of the art. Containing nine stories this volume shows the power and depth of Melville's writing, revealing how subtle and ironical he can be. All these tales are unforgettable and I must personally admit that however many times I read 'Bartleby, The Scrivener' I never tire of it. The same can apply with all these stories. As usual with all Melville's works these tales are all slighly ambigious, but this just adds to them and as you go through life and mature and come back to them you find something new in them.
If you are a fan of short stories then you should have this book, and if reading for you is a pleasure then read this, you won't be disappointed. Also included in an appendix which shows the source for the story 'Benito Cereno', and Robert Milder's introduction is also well worth a read.
Format:Paperback
I've just discovered Melville and have fallen in love with his style of writing. This is a very good collection. I don't mind admitting this, although I'm pretty sure that Bartleby the Scrivener might have preferred not to.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Short Stories
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
