The American Novel series provides students of American literature with introductory critical guides to the great works of American fiction. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction by a distinguished authority on the text, giving details of the novel’s composition, publication history, and contemporary reception, as well as a survey of the major critical trends and readings from first publication to the present. This overview is followed by a group of new essays, each specially commissioned from a leading scholar in the field, which together constitute a forum of interpretative methods and prominent contemporary ideas on the text. There are also helpful guides to further reading. Specifically designed for undergraduates, the series will be a powerful resource for anyone engaged in the critical analysis of major American novels. Moby-Dick may by America’s most eccentric, inventive, and compelling work of fiction, yet in recent years it has received surprisingly little attention. This collection of essays, the first in over twenty years, attempts to reconnect Melville’s great work with concerns that are central to readers now as well as to recent innovations in critical studies. Richard Brodhead introduces the volume with a discussion of the book’s unique place in the canon of American literature. He then recounts the novel’s history from its mixed reception in the mid-nineteenth century to its present status as a classic. The five essays that follow focus on various aspects of the novel: its vision of nature, its drama of social alienation, its religious defiance, and its splendid variety of language.