This Norton Critical Edition presents three of Melville's most important short novels--Bartleby, The Scrivener; Benito Cereno; and Billy Budd. The texts are accompanied by ample explanatory annotation.
As his writing reflects, Melville was extraordinarily well read. "Contexts" offers selections from works that influenced Melville's writing of these three short novels, including, among others, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Transcendental-ist" and Amasa Delano's Narrative of Voyages aud Travels.Johannes Dietrich Bergmann, H.Bruce Franklin, and Robert M.Cover provide overviews of Melville's probable sources.
Preface
Acknowledgments
The Texts of Melville's Short Novels
Bartleby, The Scrivener
Benito Cereno
Billy Budd, Sailor
Contexts
BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER
Johannes Dietrich Bergmann "Bartleby" and "The Lawyer's Story"
H. Bruce Franklin Bartleby: The Ascetic's Advent
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Transcendentalist
BENITO CERENO
Amasa Delano A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, Chapter XVIII
Herman Melville [On Cannibals]
BILLY BUDD
Nathaniel Hawthorne [Hawthorne and Melville in Liverpool]
Robert M. Cover From Justice Accused
Criticism
BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER
Leo Marx Melville's Parable of the Walls
Elizabeth Hardwick From Bartleby in Manhattan
Dan McCall The Reliable Narrator
BENITO CERENO
Yvor Winters and Darrel Abel On Benito Cereno: Opposing Views
Epigraph to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
Frederick Busch [Captain Delano]
Laurie Robertson-Lorant [Melville]
C. L. R. James [The Yankee Captain]
Glenn C. Mtschuler Whose Foot on Whose Throat? A Re-Examination of Melville's Benito Cereno
Allan Moore Emery The Topicality of Depravity in "Benito Cereno"
Robert Lowell Benito Cereno
Michael Rogin [Mutiny and Slave Revolt]
Richard E. Ray * "Benito Cereno": Babo as Leader
BILLY BUDD
Hershel Parker From The Plot of Billy Budd and the Politics of Interpreting It
Paul Bergman and Michael Asinow [On the Movie Billy Budd]
Tom Goldstein * Once Again, "Billy Budd" Is Standing ;Frial
Carolyn L. Karcher [Melville and Revolution]
Joyce Sparer Adler From Billy Budd and Melville's Philosophy of War
Mervyn Cooke [Homosexuality in Billy Budd]
Robert K. Martin Jr. [Is Vere a Hero?]
Ann Douglas [Father and Son in Billy Budd]
Thomas Mann [On Billy Budd]
Albert Camus [Melville's Lyricism]
Thomas J. Scorza * An Inside Narrative
Gordon Teskey The Bible in Billy Budd
Hannah Arendt [Compassion and Goodness]
Pauline Kael Billy Budd
NewtonArvin [Departure]
Selected Bibliography