Eight Lectures on Herman Melville

What can Herman Melville tell us about our media-saturated age of post-truth? This collection of essays offers students and curious readers a guide to Melville’s work that helps navigate current critical debates. The eight lectures gathered here approach the American author from multiple angles. Some reread major works like Moby-Dick and lesser-known works through the lens of post-truth rhetoric. Others widen the frame to include marginalized subjectivities, human and nonhuman. Still others retrace Melville’s authorial voice, from his literary influences to his travel writings. Together, these essays demonstrate how Melville’s work still resonates with, and sometimes ominously foreshadows, “the world we live in.” The volume also honors the retirement of Professor Giorgio Mariani, a leading scholar of American literature and Melville studies in Italy, whose work has shaped generations of Americanists—including several contributors to this book.