Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Herman Melville’s epic 19th Century novel on a Captain Ahab’s battle with the great ‘white whale’
Moby Dick is the story of a crazed and vengeful sailor, Captain Ahab, hunting a giant whale that bit off his leg. It's a large and challenging book and its author, Herman Melville died without knowing how influential or revered it would become. Although it failed to impress when it first came out in 1851, it’s now hailed as a ‘great American novel’, one of the towering achievements of American literature. With Bridget Kendall to explore the book and its author, Professor Jamie Jones from the University of Illinois, Emily Ogden from the University of Virginia and poet and academic from Lancaster University in the UK, Paul Farley.
Photo: Sperm Whale (Martin Camms/Getty Images)
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The Whale as a Noble Animal
Duration: 00:40
Broadcasts
- Sat 10 Mar 201820:06GMTBBC World Service except Australasia, East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Tue 13 Mar 201800:06GMTBBC World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, Australasia, Europe and the Middle East & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Tue 13 Mar 201809:06GMTBBC World Service except News Internet
- Tue 13 Mar 201818:06GMTBBC World Service Australasia
- Tue 13 Mar 201823:06GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa, South Asia, West and Central Africa & East Asia only
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Classic literature: Reading between the lines—The Forum
From Moby Dick to the Moomins, exploring the books that captured the world's imagination
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The Forum
The programme that explains the present by exploring the past
