Moby dick as a hybrid text : melvilles romantic and ecological views of the whale

Abstract EN

This paper examines how Herman Melville displays his Romantic and ecological viewpoints in the text of Moby Dick.

Both viewpoints cooperate with each other to constitute a hybrid text between fiction and non-fiction.

The heterogeneous quality of the text is evident in Melville's depiction of the whale.

Melville, a Romantic novelist, was interested in depicting the whale as an exotic, supernatural and mysterious monster beyond human control.

But Melville was not just a Romantic fiction writer.

The many chapters on whales and whaling show that he was also a scientific observer who tried to understand the mystery of nature from the objective point of view.