Mardi

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For the Central Coast suburb, see Mardi, New South Wales.

Mardi, and a Voyage Thither is the third book by American author Herman Melville, first published in 1849.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Mardi is Melville's first pure fiction work (while featuring fictional narrators, his previous novels were heavily autobiographical). It details (much like Typee and Omoo) the travelings of an American sailor who abandons his whaling vessel to explore the South Pacific. Unlike the first two, however, Mardi is highly philosophical and said to be the first work to show Melville's true potential. The tale begins as a simple narrative, but quickly focuses upon discourse between the main characters and their interactions with the different symbolic countries they encounter. While not as cohesive or lengthy as Moby-Dick, it shares a similar writing style as well as many of the same themes.

As a preface to Mardi, Melville wrote somewhat ironically that his first two books were nonfiction but disbelieved; by the same pattern he hoped the fiction book would be accepted as fact.

[edit] Critical response

Mardi was a critical failure. On reviewer said the book contained "ideas in so thick a haze that we are unable to perceive distinctly which is which".[1] Nevertheless, Nathaniel Parker Willis found the work "exquisite".[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Miller, Perry. The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and Melville. New York: Harvest Book, 1956: 246.

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
v • d • e
Works by Herman Melville
Novels:
Short story collections:
Short stories:
"The Piazza" · "Bartleby, the Scrivener" · "Benito Cereno" · "The Lightning-Rod Man" · "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles" · "The Bell-Tower" (all 1856)

Uncollected : "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" (1853)  · "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs" (1854)  · "The Happy Failure" (1854)  · "The Fiddler" (1854)  · "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (1855)  · "Jimmy Rose" (1855)  · "The 'Gees" (1856)  · "I and My Chimney" (1856)  · "The Apple-Tree Table" (1856)

Unpublished in Melville's lifetime : "The Two Temples"  · "Daniel Orme"
Poetry:
Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)  · Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876)  · John Marr and Other Sailors (1888)  · Timoleon (1891)  · Weeds and Wildings, and a Rose or Two (1924)
Uncollected/unpublished poems: "Epistle to Daniel Shepherd" · "Inscription for the Slain at Fredericksburgh" · "The Admiral of the White" · "To Tom" · "Suggested by the Ruins of a Mountain-temple in Arcadia" · "Puzzlement" · "The Continents" · "The Dust-Layers" · "A Rail Road Cutting near Alexandria in 1855" · "A Reasonable Constitution" · "Rammon" · "A Ditty of Aristippus" · "In a Nutshell" · "Adieu"