Herman Melville’s best-known book calls for many varieties of thoughtful reading. But it also invites careful listening to the book’s voices, whether they speak in the words of prophets, poets, and kings, or sing out in the distinctive vernacular of working sailors. This class explores the book’s borrowing of voices from, among others, Homeric epic and Shakespearean stage, the rhetoric of pulpit and podium, distinctive Yankee twangs, and African-American and Pacific Islander dialects. Most are loud, many exaggerated. But Melville also draws on what Toni Morrison calls “unspeakable things unspoken,” which can be heard in the sailors’ dreams and in unearthly cries of sea hawks and unheard songs of whales. Although we will read the text as written, we will also consult audible recordings, including the annual Melville reading marathons at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

COURSE MATERIALS
This course requires participants to purchase/rent reading materials.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. (Suggested Edition: Edited by Hershel Parker. Third Norton Critical Edition. Norton, 2018.)
Registrants will receive access to the course website about two weeks before the course starts.

COURSE CANCELLATION POLICY
Registrants can cancel and receive a full refund up to March 3. After March 3, there will be no refunds issued.
Yale Alumni College courses are subject to schedule changes as well as cancellations. If Yale Alumni College must cancel any course prior to its start due to low enrollment, you will be notified of this by the cancellation date. Upon cancellation of a course, registrants may transfer their registration to another available course or have the registration fee fully refunded.

In the event of a disruption to the original course schedule, including but not limited to; Professor absence, hazardous weather conditions, or local travel restrictions, Yale Alumni College will do its best to reschedule the missed class for the week immediately following the original end date at the same course time and day.