Buying pre-order items
Ebook and audiobook pre-orders will be delivered on the publication date.
Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available
Description
American Epic: Philosophy, Power, and Impiety in Melville's Moby-Dick offers a study of Herman Melville's Captain Ahab as an “American Achilles” whose rebellion against nature and nature's God anticipates the rise of modern tyranny. Drawing on classical sources such as Homer and Shakespeare, and engaging American political thought from Tocqueville to Voegelin, the book argues that Melville prophetically exposes the dangers inherent in science, politics, and the will to power.
Melville's Ahab is a figure who seeks freedom through perfect power, rejecting natural limits, transcending humility, and refusing all moral restraint. Against this destructive impulse, Melville offers Ishmael as a counter-example: a figure who discovers meaning not through domination, but through wonder, community, and acceptance of his inherent human limitations. Samuel S. Postell situates Moby-Dick as the American epic precisely because it confronts the deepest tensions of liberty, authority, faith, and ambition. By providing a close textual reading of Moby-Dick alongside the essential themes of ancient epics, modern philosophy, and nineteenth-century political crises, this book shows why Melville should be considered one of America's most profound critics of tyranny and one of its most serious defenders of liberty.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: American Epic or American Failure?
Chapter 2: Melville's Homer
Chapter 3: Twin Shoals of Liberty: Irrational Do-Gooderism and Disrespect for Natural Rights
Chapter 4: Melville's Anticipatory Refutation: Ahab as Übermensch?
Chapter 5: Ahab's tools for tyranny, ancient and modern
Chapter 6: The Unrepresentable, Represented; The Unknowable Made Known
Chapter 7: Little Pip, The Inversion of Love and the Failure of Tyrannical Compassion
Chapter 8: The Last Lowering: Dioboli or Patris?
Chapter 9: Melville's Governing Principle: Democratic Dignity
Epilogue: From American Achilles to American Odysseus
Product details
| Published | Jan 21 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 9781978767249 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Series | Politics, Literature, & Film |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Related Titles
