Benito Cereno
"Melville was a born romancer. One cannot account for the success of his early romances by saying that in the Great South Sea he had found and worked a new field for romance, since evidently it was not his experience in the South Sea that had led him to romance, but the irresistible attraction that romance had over him that led him to the South Sea. He was able not only to feel but to interpret that charm, as it never had been interpreted before, as it never has been interpreted since." - Eulogy Editorial in the New York Times, 1891
The life and legacy of Herman Melville have taken on various incarnations in the nearly 200 years since he was born. When he died in 1891, Melville was remembered for his series of well-received works back in the mid-19th century, particularly his first novel Typee, a bestseller when it was initially published. But his death followed over four decades of general obscurity, which was noted in an editorial eulogy for Melville that appeared in the New York Times: "There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended."
Melville's name may have been almost completely forgotten during his own lifetime, but there was a "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century, thanks to Raymond Weaver's biography on him in 1921 and several works reviewing American literature in the years following.
Benito Cereno is a story that focuses on a slave rebellion on a merchant ship around the turn of the 19th century.
1116753046
Benito Cereno
"Melville was a born romancer. One cannot account for the success of his early romances by saying that in the Great South Sea he had found and worked a new field for romance, since evidently it was not his experience in the South Sea that had led him to romance, but the irresistible attraction that romance had over him that led him to the South Sea. He was able not only to feel but to interpret that charm, as it never had been interpreted before, as it never has been interpreted since." - Eulogy Editorial in the New York Times, 1891
The life and legacy of Herman Melville have taken on various incarnations in the nearly 200 years since he was born. When he died in 1891, Melville was remembered for his series of well-received works back in the mid-19th century, particularly his first novel Typee, a bestseller when it was initially published. But his death followed over four decades of general obscurity, which was noted in an editorial eulogy for Melville that appeared in the New York Times: "There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended."
Melville's name may have been almost completely forgotten during his own lifetime, but there was a "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century, thanks to Raymond Weaver's biography on him in 1921 and several works reviewing American literature in the years following.
Benito Cereno is a story that focuses on a slave rebellion on a merchant ship around the turn of the 19th century.
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Benito Cereno

Benito Cereno

by Herman Melville
Benito Cereno

Benito Cereno

by Herman Melville

Overview

"Melville was a born romancer. One cannot account for the success of his early romances by saying that in the Great South Sea he had found and worked a new field for romance, since evidently it was not his experience in the South Sea that had led him to romance, but the irresistible attraction that romance had over him that led him to the South Sea. He was able not only to feel but to interpret that charm, as it never had been interpreted before, as it never has been interpreted since." - Eulogy Editorial in the New York Times, 1891
The life and legacy of Herman Melville have taken on various incarnations in the nearly 200 years since he was born. When he died in 1891, Melville was remembered for his series of well-received works back in the mid-19th century, particularly his first novel Typee, a bestseller when it was initially published. But his death followed over four decades of general obscurity, which was noted in an editorial eulogy for Melville that appeared in the New York Times: "There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended."
Melville's name may have been almost completely forgotten during his own lifetime, but there was a "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century, thanks to Raymond Weaver's biography on him in 1921 and several works reviewing American literature in the years following.
Benito Cereno is a story that focuses on a slave rebellion on a merchant ship around the turn of the 19th century.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496164575
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date: 03/06/2014
Pages: 54
Product dimensions: 5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.11(d)

About the Author

Brian Yothers is Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Date of Birth:

August 1, 1819

Date of Death:

September 28, 1891

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended the Albany Academy in Albany, New York, until age 15

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Herman Melville: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

“Benito Cereno”

Appendix A: Representations of Slave Revolt and the Slave Trade
  • 1. From Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817)
  • 2. From Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave” (1853)
  • 3. From John Quincy Adams, Argument of John Quincy Adams Before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Case of United States, Appellants, Cinque, and Others, Africans (1841)
  • 4. From Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
  • 5. From Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856)
  • 6. From The Confessions of Nat Turner (1832)
  • 7. Am I Not a Man and a Brother? (1787)
  • 8. Stowage of the British Slave Ship Brookes under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788
  • 9. The Slave Deck of the Bark “Wildfire” Brought into Key West on 30 April 1860
  • 10. The Abolition of the Slave Trade (1792)
  • 11. Cinque, the Chief of the Amistad Captives (1840)
Appendix B: Herman Melville on Race, Slavery, Colonialism, and Violence
  • 1. From Herman Melville, Typee (1846)
  • 2. From Herman Melville, “Mr. Parkman’s Tour,” New York Literary World (31 March 1849)
  • 3. From Herman Melville, “A Bosom Friend,” in Moby-Dick, or, The Whale (1851)
  • 4. From Herman Melville, “Midnight, Forecastle,” in Moby-Dick, or, The Whale (1851)
  • 5. Herman Melville, “Formerly a Slave,” in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
  • 6. Herman Melville, “The Swamp Angel,” in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
  • 7. From Herman Melville, Supplement to Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
  • 8. From Herman Melville, Clarel, A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876)
Appendix C: The Haitian Revolution and the Black Legend
  • 1. John Greenleaf Whittier, “Toussaint L’Ouverture” (1833)
  • 2. William Wordsworth, “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” (1802)
  • 3. From Frank J. Webb, The Garies and Their Friends (1857)
  • 4. Toussaint Louverture
  • 5. From Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
  • 6. From James Montgomery, The West Indies (1810)
Appendix D: Anti-Slavery Rhetoric and Poetry
  • 1. From Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (5 July 1852)
  • 2. Frederick Douglass, “A Parody,” in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
  • 3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” (1849)
  • 4. James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis” (1844)
  • 5. James M. Whitfield, “To Cinque” (1853)
  • 6. James M. Whitfield, “Lines on the Death of John Quincy Adams” (1853)
  • 7. James M. Whitfield, “America” (1853)
  • 8. Frances E.W. Harper, “The Slave Mother. A Tale of the Ohio” (1857)
  • 9. Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Caste and Christ” (1853)
  • 10. From Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)
  • 11. Lydia Maria Child, “The Influence of Slavery with Regard to Moral Purity” (1838)
  • 12. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, “To the First Slave Ship” (1827)
Appendix E: Melville and the Theory of Short Fiction
  • 1. From Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and his Mosses,” Literary World (1850)
  • 2. From Edgar Allan Poe, Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, Graham’s Magazine (1842)
  • 3. Review of The Piazza Tales, United States Democratic Review (September 1856)
  • 4. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to The House of the Seven Gables (1852)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography

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