This new collection offers timely, critical essays specially commissioned to provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.

Specially commissioned essays provide a critical introduction to one of the most significant writers of nineteenth-century America.

This New Companion offers fifteen short, lively essays on a range of topics in Melville studies, including a number of new topics in American literary studies - animal studies, planetary studies, law and literature, oceanic studies - and reconsiderations of classic topics such as form and aesthetics.

In a series of 35 original essays, this companion demonstrates the relevance of Melville’s works in the twenty-first century. Presents 35 original essays by scholars from around the world, representing a range of different approaches to Melville Considers Melville in a global context, and looks at the impact of global economies and technologies on the way people read Melville Takes account of the latest and most sophisticated scholarship, including postcolonial and feminist perspectives Locates Melville in his cultural milieu, revising our views of his politics on race, gender and democracy Reveals Melville as a more contemporary writer than his critics have sometimes assumed

A portrait of the diverse literary cultures of New York from its beginnings as a Dutch colony to the present.

This volume provides newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics on the social and cultural history of the novel in America. It explores the work of the most influential American novelists of the past 200 years, including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison.

Discover a fascinating new set of perspectives on the life and work of Herman Melville A New Companion to Herman Melville delivers an insightful examination of Melville for the twenty-first century. Building on the success of the first Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville, and offering a variety of tools for reading, writing, and teaching Melville and other authors, this New Companion offers critical, technological, and aesthetic practices that can be employed to read Melville in exciting and revelatory ways. Editors Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge create a framework that reflects a pluralistic model for humanities teaching and research. In doing so, the contributing authors highlight the ways in which Melville himself was concerned with the utility of tools within fluid circuits of meaning, and how those ideas are embodied, enacted, and mediated. In addition to considering critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, religion, transatlantic and hemispheric studies, digital humanities, book history, neurodiversity, and new biography and reception studies, this book offers: A thorough introduction to the life of Melville, as well as the twentieth- and twenty-first-century revivals of his work Comprehensive explorations of Melville’s works, including Moby-Dick, Pierre, Piazza Tales, and Israel Potter, as well as his poems and poetic masterpiece Clarel Practical discussions of material books, print culture, and digital technologies as applied to Melville In-depth examinations of Melville's treatment of the natural world Two symposium sections with concise reflections on art and adaptation, and on teaching and public engagement A New Companion to Herman Melville provides essential reading for scholars and students ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to more advanced scholars and specialists in the field.

This Companion is the first critical collection of its kind devoted solely to American poetry of the nineteenth century. It covers a wide variety of authors, many of whom are currently being rediscovered. A number of anthologies in the recent past have been devoted to the verse of groups such as Native Americans, African-Americans and women. This volume offers essays covering these groups as well as more familiar figures such as Dickinson, Whitman, Longfellow and Melville. The contents are divided between broad topics of concern such as the poetry of the Civil War or the development of the 'poetess' role and articles featuring specific authors such as Edgar Allan Poe or Sarah Piatt. In the past two decades a growing body of scholarship has been engaged in reconceptualizing and re-evaluating this largely neglected area of study in US literary history - this Companion reflects and advances this spirit of revisionism.

This collection of specially-commissioned essays by experts in the field explores key dimensions of Edgar Allan Poe's work and life. Contributions provide a series of alternative perspectives on one of the most enigmatic and controversial American writers. The essays, specially tailored to the needs of undergraduates, examine all of Poe's major writings, his poetry, short stories and criticism, and place his work in a variety of literary, cultural and political contexts. They situate his imaginative writings in relation to different modes of writing: humor, Gothicism, anti-slavery tracts, science fiction, the detective story, and sentimental fiction. Three chapters examine specific works: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Raven', and 'Ulalume'. The volume features a detailed chronology and a comprehensive guide to further reading, and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Cormac McCarthy both embodies and redefines the notion of the artist as outsider. His fiction draws on recognizable American themes and employs dense philosophical and theological subtexts, challenging readers by depicting the familiar as inscrutably foreign. The essays in this Companion offer a sophisticated yet concise introduction to McCarthy's difficult and provocative work. The contributors, an international team of McCarthy scholars, analyze some of the most well-known and commonly taught novels - Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and The Road - while providing detailed treatments of McCarthy's work in cinema, including the many adaptations of his novels to film. Designed for scholars, teachers and general readers, and complete with a chronology and bibliography for further reading, this Companion is an essential reference for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of one of America's most celebrated living novelists.