Moby Dick

Melville’s novel is highly allusive: he makes references to Shakespeare, to Milton, to contemporary authors, to historians, to classical literature in Latin and Greek. He was a multimedia man, and he put a lot of that media into his novel. This group’s job is to think about what passages or events might resemble moments in other forms of literature. Does a particular passage recall a moment in Shakespeare (one of his plays, or a line of his poetry)? Does a particular passage resemble a Greek myth you read in high school? You can also do a little bit of web research to find out what particular literary allusions Melville might be making in a passage. Or, you can make an educated guess — you can even say that a passage reminds you of a totally different, later, or more contemporary piece of literature you read (as long as you explain why).

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