A collection of essays presented at the sesquicentenary Moby-Dick conference The twenty-one essays collected in "Ungraspable Phantom" are from an international conference held in 2001 celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick. The essays reflect not only a range of problems and approaches but also the cosmopolitan perspective of international scholarship. They offer new thoughts on familiar topics: the novel's problematic structure, its sources in and reinvention of the Bible, its Lacanian and post-Freudian psychology, and its rhetoric. They also present fresh information on new areas of interest: Melville's creative process, law and jurisprudence, Freemasonry and labor, race, Latin Americanism, and the Native American. Scholars, students, and readers of Moby-Dick will find this collection of essays fresh and insightful.

Melville's continuing adventures in the South Seas?now for the first time in Penguin Classics

Following the commercial and critical success of "Typee," Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with "Omoo." Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, "Omoo" chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville's personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colorful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia.