Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
725 pp, $11.95. Order Now!
"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
A sea adventure, a study of evil, and a cast of fascinating characters, including the crazed captain who is obsessed with hunting down the whale that maimed him — Moby-Dick is all of this and more.
Study Guide to Moby-Dick
32 pp, $3.95
ICE Study Guides are constructed to aid the reader of ICE classics to achieve a level of critical and literary appreciation befitting the works themselves.
Ideally suited for students themselves and as a guide for teachers, the ICE Study Guides serve as a complement to the treasures of critical appreciation already included in ICE titles.
Based on the author's experiences as a sailor, Herman Melville's probing look into the human heart has been read and analyzed from every angle, including the most absurd. The tragic tale is looked at afresh in this Ignatius Critical Edition, which examines the background and other writings of the author and provides his essay on a work by his literary friend Nathaniel Hawthorne.
A look at the essays
Classic Criticism
- "Excerpts from 'Hawthorne and His Mosses'" – Herman Melville
Contemporary Criticism
- "Apocalyptic Readings of Moby-Dick: What Ishmael Returns to Tell Us" – Robert Alexander
- "'Civilized Hypocrisies and Bland Deceits' in Moby-Dick" – Mitchell Kalpakgian
- "Moby-Dick: The Republic at Sea" – Stephen Zelnick
Mary R. Reichardt situates the reader with the introductory essay.
Books by Author
by last name, except for Wm. Shakespeare
Meet the Minds behind the Moby-Dick Edition
Editors
Mary Reichardt
Mary Reichardt is Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota. She received a PhD in literature from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has published eight books, including Catholic Women Writers (Greenwood, 2001), Exploring Catholic Literature (Sheed and Ward / Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), the two-volume Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature (Greenwood, 2004), and Between Human and Divine: The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature (Catholic University of America Press, 2010).
Critical Essayists
Robert Alexander
Robert Alexander has been a teacher for nearly forty years. A full professor, he is currently an adjunct at the University of Dallas, where he teaches all the great literary works from Homer to the moderns in the university's renowned core curriculum. At present, he is on leave writing a book in which he argues that the three traditional genres — lyric, narrative, and drama — have their ontological roots in the three Persons of the Trinity.
Critical Essays in
Mitchell Kalpakgian
Mitchell Kalpakgian (PhD, University of Iowa) is professor emeritus of humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. He has taught English literature for over forty years at several other schools: Simpson College (Iowa), Christendom College (Virginia), and Magdalen College (New Hampshire). A contributing editor of New Oxford Review, his articles and book reviews have also appeared in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, the Wanderer, and Saint Austin Review. He is the author of several books: The Marvelous in Fielding's Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children's Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, and An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories). His latest book is The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization: Hospitality, Conversion, Letter-Writing, the Enjoyment of People, the Art of Pleasing and Courtship (Neumann Press, 2009).
Critical Essays In
Stephen Zelnick
Stephen Zelnick, PhD, teaches British literature at Temple University and has written on William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as on curriculum design. He is cofounder of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, has directed Temple's Intellectual Heritage Program, and has served as vice provost for undergraduate studies. He also consults on international curriculum projects.