Ahab was named by his insane, widowed mother, who died when he was twelve months old. The etymology of the name … See more

According to Melville biographer Leon Howard, "Ahab is a Shakespearean tragic hero, created according to the Coleridgean formula." The creation of Ahab, who apparently does not derive from any captain Mel… See more

Ahab's character is shaped by mythic and literary patterns that overlap and reinforce each other in such a complementary way that "the apparent irony of one allusion is frequently the truth of another." For instance, al… See more

When the book was first published, reviewers mostly focused on Ahab and the whale. According to George Ripley in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for December 1851, Ahab "becomes the victim of a deep, c… See more

The first two film adaptations show "the radical surgery that Hollywood performed on Herman Melville's masterpiece." The first was a 1926 silent movie, The Sea Beast, a romantic love story in which the character o… See more

• Barbour, James. (1986). "Melville Biography: A Life and the Lives." A Companion to Melville Studies. Ed. John Bryant. New York, Westport, London: Greenwood Press.
• Delbanco, Andrew. (2005). Mel… See more