検索キーワード： "Mark Owen" 古典

Written in seclusion following the intense negative public reaction to the publication of his novel Pierre, The Piazza Tales is Herman Melville's accessible and entertaining collection of short stories and novellas concerning love, labor, and loss. The collection includes his three most important achievements in the genre of short fiction: the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the novellas Benito Cereno and The Encantadas.

The Encantadas (or Enchanted Isles) is a series of 10 descriptive sketches, and a reminiscence from Melville's sailor days revealing the ecologically pristine Galapagos Islands as both enchanting and horrifying. Containing some of Melville's most memorable prose, The Encantadas was a critical success at a time when Melville's fortunes were down. After publication, the New York Dispatch cited the chapters as universally considered among the most interesting papers of that popular magazine, and each successive chapter was read with avidity by thousands.

Bannadonna is an eccentric artist and architect who dreams up plans for a magnificent bell tower. After receiving approval from the city, Bannadonna happily begins construction, but local citizens begin to notice strange occurrences associated with the bell-tower, and complaints eventually reach the city magistrates. While touring the magistrates around the tower, Bannadonna shows off his work and readily answers their questions, but one curiosity remains unanswered—what lies beneath the shroud in the bell-tower.

Written as an introductory story to The Piazza Tales, the protagonist of The Piazza idealizes a radiant spot on the mountain that he looks upon from his piazza. Traveling to the spot he realizes it is a house, occupied by the unhappy girl Marianna, who longs to see the lucky individual who lives in the white house she looks upon from her window. The narrator realizes he has been the object of a fantasy like his own, and leaves thinking how all idealism is an illusion.

Chosen for inclusion in William Evans Burton's Cyclopediae of Wit and Humor of 1857, The Lightning-Rod Man was the one Melville tale to be available throughout his lifetime, thanks to reissues of this volume. More a parable than a character-driven story, the Lightning-Rod man is a charlatan who tries to profit by selling fearful people lightning-rods during thunderstorms. The narrator has a difficult encounter with the Lightning-Rod man in this story about overcoming fear and superstition.