Moby Dick

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2017

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Herman Melville's (1819-1891) epic novel, published in London in 1851, the story of Captain Ahab's pursuit of a great white sperm whale that had bitten off his leg. He risks his own life and that of his crew on the Pequod, single-mindedly seeking his revenge, his story narrated by Ishmael who was taking part in a whaling expedition for the first time. This is one of the c1000 ideas which listeners sent in this autumn for our fourth Listener Week, following Kafka's The Trial in 2014, Captain Cook in 2015 and Garibaldi and the Risorgimento in 2016. With Bridget Bennett Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds Katie McGettigan Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London And Graham Thompson Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:02.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:05.0	There's a reading list to go with it on our website,
0:07.0	and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:12.0	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:14.0	Hello, Moby Dick by Herman Melville tells the story of Captain Ahab,
0:18.0	whose leg was bitten off by a great white whale,
0:20.0	and Ahab wants to hunt it down and kill it in revenge.
0:23.0	It was published in 1851,
0:25.0	but it was over 50 years before Moby Dick became known or thought of
0:29.0	as a great American novel as it is today.
0:32.0	Then in the Cold War,
0:33.0	we saw Ahab as a dictator,
0:35.0	leading his crew on the peacord to disaster in pursuit of a mission they didn't sign up for.
0:39.0	We're discussing Moby Dick now, this autumn,
0:42.0	as this autumn we ask you to suggest today's topic.
0:45.0	This one came from James Rogers, Michael Redman, Caroline Heck,
0:49.0	Mike Stanley, Arizonne Baker, Drew Kirkland, Charlie Pullen,
0:53.0	Mike Medcap, John Rowlands, Minkoo Young and Martin Paget.
0:57.0	Our thanks go to them, and to all of you for sending in almost a thousand ideas,
1:01.0	we will plunder those in the years to come.
1:03.0	When me to discuss Moby Dick, our Brigid Bennett,
	...

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