Melville, Herman
Melville, Herman (1819–91),American novelist. Melville himself hoped that Nathaniel Hawthorne would emulate Shakespeare's achievement for America, but most critics feel that Melville's own epic-tragedy Moby-Dick (1851) comes nearest to fulfilling that function, Captain Ahab evoking King Lear, and Pip the Fool (see Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael, 1947). Melville was always drawn to Shakespeare's tragic vision, his power of darkness, his capacity for invoking savage nature, and several versions of Iago (Jackson in Redburn, 1849; Babo in Benito Cereno, 1855; and Claggart in Billy Budd, 1924) surface throughout his work.
Tom Matheson
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