Melville’s Moby-Dick, or The Whale (1851) is an American as well as a universal epic, and a stylistic masterpiece. It is the tragic quest of the monomaniac Captain Ahab, who seeks revenge on the white whale that has bitten off his leg. The young narrator (‘Call me Ishmael’) embarks on the Pequod among a crew symbolising all the nations and persuasions of the world. As the sole survivor of a doomed voyage across all the world’s seas, he learns that man can never win the battle against nature….

Wim Tigges is anglicist and literary scholar, as well as a guest-lecturer at Leiden University and HOVO.