南开大学 外国语学院 美国文学课件美国文学史-《白鲸》课堂展示版.docVIP

Herman Melville MELVILLES LIFE Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, to Allan Melvill (as his father spelled his name) and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. Both sides of the family were quite well off, and could even be called aristocratic in a sense; his father came from a line of successful merchants, and his mother from Hudson Valley landholders. His childhood was a secure and comfortable one, but his fortunes changed in 1830, when his father suffered serious business losses. In January, 1832, Allan Melvill died, mentally and physically exhausted. Melville had idolized his father, and his death was a profound shock. For several years thereafter, the family was in a financial twilight, never destitute (一贫如洗) but never secure. During this difficult period, Melvilles family moved upstate in New York, to a little town near Troy. His education was spotty (非系统的); he attended the Albany Classical School (Albany 学校) for a time, but during these formative years (少年时代) he had no consistent schooling. His mother, a rather domineering woman, became even more overbearing (very domineering )after her husbands death, and her influence (combined with the strict Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church (荷兰归正新教教会), to which she belonged) seems to have inspired in Melville some of the religious skepticism and rebelliousness （激发起对宗教的怀疑及反叛精神）that runs under the surface of （在… 中隐约可见）Moby Dick and others of his works. Melville developed in his mature years a feeling (产生了一种感觉,即:) that no profound mind could overlook a sense of fateful imperfection in life (任何思想深邃的人都不能忽视生活中的一种命中注定的缺陷感) (one senses this attitude frequently in Moby Dick ), which was probably the result of the very strong Calvinistic idea of original sin. When eighteen years old, he took a job as a schoolmaster at a remote school near Pittsfield, Massachusetts (where his uncles family lived). Then, in the summer of 1839, he signed up as a boy (干杂活的伙计) on a British merchant ship, the St.