Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Billy Budd and American labor unrest: the case for striking back
- 2 Religion, myth, and meaning in the art of Billy Budd, Sailor
- 3 Old man Melville: the rose and the cross
- 4 Melville's indirection: Billy Budd, the genetic text, and “the deadly space between”
- Select bibliography
- Index
Series Editor's Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Billy Budd and American labor unrest: the case for striking back
- 2 Religion, myth, and meaning in the art of Billy Budd, Sailor
- 3 Old man Melville: the rose and the cross
- 4 Melville's indirection: Billy Budd, the genetic text, and “the deadly space between”
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
In literary criticism the last twenty-five years have been particularly fruitful. Since the rise of the New Criticism in the 1950s, which focused attention of critics and readers upon the text itself – apart from history, biography, and society – there has emerged a wide variety of critical methods which have brought to literaryworks a rich diversity of perspectives: social, historical, political, psychological, economic, ideological, and philosophical. While attention to the text itself, as taught by the New Critics, remains at the core of contemporary interpretation, the widely shared assumption that works of art generate many different kinds of interpretations has opened up possibilities for new readings and new meanings.
Before this critical revolution, many works of American literature had come to be taken for granted by earlier generations of readers as having an established set of recognized interpretations. There was a sense among many students that the canon was established and that the larger thematic and interpretative issues had been decided. The task of the new reader was to examine the ways in which elements such as structure, style, and imagery contributed to each novel's acknowledged purpose.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- New Essays on Billy Budd , pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002