Leviathan or the whale
Leviathan or the whale
The story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching.
All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality – they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious.
In ‘Leviathan’, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick’? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again.
This book is an investigation into what we know little about – dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions.
978-0-00-723014-3
Hoare, Philip
2ec34f97-a85f-47fa-ab3c-71726b9747d5
11 June 2009
Hoare, Philip
2ec34f97-a85f-47fa-ab3c-71726b9747d5
Hoare, Philip
(2009)
Leviathan or the whale
,
London, GB.
Fourth Estate, 352pp.
Abstract
The story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching.
All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality – they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious.
In ‘Leviathan’, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick’? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again.
This book is an investigation into what we know little about – dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions.
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Published date: 11 June 2009
Organisations:
English
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Local EPrints ID: 353263
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/353263
ISBN: 978-0-00-723014-3
PURE UUID: 388aa05b-e46c-4f4b-892f-8921869d50ad
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Date deposited: 03 Jun 2013 16:14
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 02:15
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Author:
Philip Hoare
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