The Necessity of a Piazza: The Structure of Perspective in Melville's The Piazza Tales

dc.contributor.author Young, Morris
dc.contributor.department English
dc.date.accessioned 2014-01-15T19:53:59Z
dc.date.available 2014-01-15T19:53:59Z
dc.date.issued 2014-01-15
dc.description.abstract When the reviews of Herman Melville's The Piazza Tales came out in June of 1856, there was a mix of praise and disappointment over the newly collected works. Included in The Piazza Tales were two long and well-known stories ("Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno"); two shorter and lesser known tales ("The Lightning-Rod Man" and "Bell-Tower"); a series of "sketches" ("The Encantadas"); and "The Piazza," a piece written especially as a preface to the collection. Though all of the tales except "the Piazza" had appeared previously in Putnum's Monthly Magazine, there was some apprehension and confusion on the part of the public as to how they should receive this new collection of "old" works. It was legitimate for the public and critics to view Piazza Tales merely as the re-release of a few short stories with the addition of a new tale or preface. Reviews of Piazza Tales support this attitude: they comment on individual tales but rarely consider the work as a whole. This focus on the individual tales was continued in the 1960's when an enormous amount of Melville criticism was produced. We find dozens of studies about "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno," "The Encantadas," and the other tales, but little attention is paid to The Piazza Tales as a unified work. Even "The Piazza," the stated preface to the collection has been looked at more as a tale in itself, rather than as an introduction and unifier of the five other works that follow it.
dc.format.extent 92 pages
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10125/31867
dc.publisher University of Hawaii at Manoa
dc.rights All UHM Honors Projects are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dc.title The Necessity of a Piazza: The Structure of Perspective in Melville's The Piazza Tales
dc.type Term Project
dc.type.dcmi Text
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