Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson
2015 Reprint of the 1947 edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences especially Shakespearean ones on Melville's writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the theory of the two Moby-Dicks, Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville's reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: the first book did not contain Ahab, writes Olson, and it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick. If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the theory of the two Moby-Dicks, it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy.
Not only important, but apocalypticNew York Herald Tribune One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it. San Francisco Chronicle Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library. -- Lewis Mumford New York Times
Charles Olson (1910-1970), an avant garde poet, literary critic, and literary theorist, is the author of The Maximus Poems, The Distances, The Human Universe and Other Essays, and In Cold Hell, in Thicket.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780801857317 |
| ISBN 10 | 0801857317 |
| Title | Call Me Ishmael |
| Author | Charles Olson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Year published | 1998-01-23 |
| Number of pages | 164 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |