Melville's Unique Reflections On Good And Evil Of Human Nature

Melville is one of the greatest masters in the 19^thcentury American world of letters. He is a profound philosopher and poet as well as a novelist,sharply eyeing every social change of his time.His masterpiece,Moby Dick is generally reputed to be not only an encyclopedia of the whaling industry but also an American epic.Also it is widely accepted as a great literary classic in the whole process of world literary development.It is also widely accepted as the summit of American nineteenth-century fictions with heart-shaking whaling experience,philosophical meditation of realism and fantasy, invested with the mysterious color of romance.However,the pity is that most critics just focus their efforts on his masterpieces Moby Dick and somewhat ignore some of his other works,especially Typee,his first book,and Billy Budd,his last book,which might be pardonable as they are overshadowed by Moby Dick to a large degree.But we must be aware of the fact that there is a strong thread running through the three books of Typee, Moby Dick and Billy Budd in the process of Melville's inquiry into good and evil of human nature.Thus,this paper centers on Melville's peculiar sense of good and evil of human nature depicted in the three books by means of intertextuality and from a perspective of cultural criticism so that we can explore how Melville deals with the topic from a dialectical perspective peculiar to him in the change from a writer with mechanical and simple records of his life adventure to one with philosophical profundity and poetic wisdom.