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영어

After the failure of Moby Dick, Herman Melville resorted to the format of a travelogue that had brought him success as a writer. In “The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles,” Melville relies heavily on such voyage narratives as Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle and David Porter's Voyage of the South Pacific as the major sources of his novella on the Galapagos. This essay analyzes how Melville differentiates his novella from the borrowed source texts and transforms “The Encantadas” into a unique critique of human society instead of merely imitating voyage narratives. In the sketches portraying the landscape of and life on the islands, Melville seems to adopt the attitude of a Darwinian scientist. However, he rejects a single, hierarchical system of classifying animals and extends this attitude towards humans. Consistent with the meaning of Encantadas, where optical delusions and mirages can happen, Melville reinterprets nature and the inhabitants of the islands described in other voyage narratives from his unique perspective.