Synopses & Reviews
The Second Edition features significantly expanded explanatory annotations, particularly of biblical allusions.
"Contemporary Reviews" includes nineteen commentaries on The Confidence-Man, eight of them new to the Second Edition. Better understood today are the concerted attacks on Melville by, especially, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist reviewers.
A new section, "Biographical Overviews," embodies the transformation of knowledge about Melville"s life that has occurred over the last three decades. This section provides a wide range of readings of Melville"s life by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dennis Marnon, and Hershel Parker, among others.
"Sources, Backgrounds, and Criticism" is thematically organized to inform readers about movements and social developments central to Melville"s America and to this novel, including utopias, cults, cure-alls, Transcendentalism, Indian hating, the Bible, and popular literature.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.
Synopsis
The Second Edition features significantly expanded explanatory annotations, particularly of biblical allusions. "Contemporary Reviews" includes nineteen commentaries on , eight of them new to the Second Edition. Better understood today are the concerted attacks on Melville by, especially, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist reviewers. A new section, "Biographical Overviews," embodies the transformation of knowledge about Melville's life that has occurred over the last three decades. This section provides a wide range of readings of Melville's life by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dennis Marnon, and Hershel Parker, among others. "Sources, Backgrounds, and Criticism" is thematically organized to inform readers about movements and social developments central to Melville's America and to this novel, including utopias, cults, cure-alls, Transcendentalism, Indian hating, the Bible, and popular literature. A Selected Bibliography is also included.
Synopsis
"Contemporary Reviews" includes nineteen commentaries onThe Confidence-Man, eight of them new to the Second Edition. Better understood today are the concerted attacks on Melville by, especially, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist reviewers. A new section, "Biographical Overviews," embodies the transformation of knowledge about Melville s life that has occurred over the last three decades. This section provides a wide range of readings of Melville s life by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dennis Marnon, and Hershel Parker, among others "Sources, Backgrounds, and Criticism" is thematically organized to inform readers about movements and social developments central to Melville s America and to this novel, including utopias, cults, cure-alls, Transcendentalism, Indian hating, the Bible, and popular literature A Selected Bibliography is also included. "
Synopsis
The text of reprinted here is again that of the first American edition (1857), slightly corrected.
About the Author
Hershel Parker is a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, and of the Norton Critical Edition of Melville's The Confidence-Man and Moby Dick. He is co-editor of the multi-volume The Writings of Herman Melville (Northwestern-Newberry).Mark Niemeyer is Associate Professor of English at the Sorbonne. He is Associate Editor of the multi-volume Pléiade edition of Herman Melville, Oeuvres, Associate Editor of Literature on the Move: Comparing Diasporic Ethnicities in Europe and co-author of a French high school textbook on British and American history.