The Piazza Tales

By Herman Melville

First published in 1856, five years after the appearance of Moby Dick, The Piazza Tales comprises six of Herman Melville's finest short stories. Included are two sea tales that encompass the essence of Melville's art: 'Benito Cereno,' an exhilarating account of mutiny and rescue aboard a disabled slave ship, which is a parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, and 'The Encantadas,' ten allegorical sketches of the Galapagos Islands, which reveal nature to be both enchanting and horrifying. Two pieces explore themes of isolation and defeat found in Melville's great novels: 'Bartleby, the Scrivener,' a prophetically modern story of alienation and loss on nineteenth-century Wall Street, and 'The Bell-Tower,' a Faustian tale about a Renaissance architect who brings about his own violent destruction. The other two works reveal Melville's mastery of very different writing styles: 'The Lightning-Rod Man,' a satire showcasing his talent for Dickensian comedy, and 'The Piazza,' the title story of the collection, which anticipates the author's later absorption with poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9780679641711

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet who received wide acclaim for his earliest novels, such as Typee and Redburn, but fell into relative obscurity by the end of his life. Today, Melville is hailed as one of the definitive masters of world literature for novels including Moby Dick and Billy Budd, as well as for enduringly popular short stories such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Bell-Tower.

Reviews for The Piazza Tales

[drfp_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A pretty middling collection of tales, though nothing too inaccessible for Melville. The two novellas - Benito Cereno and Barteby - are definitely the stand outs here, though even suffer from requiring Melville to explain to you constantly why main characters behave in such ridiculous ways (why a lawyer would keep on paying a man who doesn't do his work or obey orders; why a captain sees so many signs of treachery but is repeatedly distracted by a sneeze or a swoon). The other tales aren't bad, but they're neither here nor there.

[poquette_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Piazza Tales is a collection of six stories of varying length, which are the only collection of short pieces published during Melville's lifetime. These stories present a good cross-section of Melville's writing and the themes he addressed, particularly in his later work.The title story "The Piazza" is a small masterpiece, which is about as direct a representation as one will find of Melville's unique combination of Romanticism, Stoicism and situational irony. To read this story and see these elements at work informs one's understanding of each of the stories that follow. The story opens with several pages of the "isn't nature sublime" type of writing which had been out of fashion for at least two generations before Melville's time. However, there is a point to this, because it sets the reader up for what eventually takes place.The narrator's house is situated in a valley that is surrounded by mountains, but the house is lacking a porch or veranda — Melville's term is "piazza." As he says, "The house was wide — my fortune narrow; so that to build a panoramic piazza, one round and round, it could not be." He could only afford to build on one side.After considering the vistas from each side, he settles upon the northern prospect, which provides a view of Greylock, a veritable "Charlemagne" among mountains. By and by, as he sits on his new porch gazing off into the distance, he gradually becomes aware of a construction high up the mountainside, which he finally decides must be a house rather than a barn because of the chance reflection in a glass window, which spoke of human habitation. As he recovers from a long illness, the "golden mountain-window" puts him in mind of the fairy queen Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he had just been reading, and he fancies "the queen of fairies at her fairy window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl." He decides it will do him good, "it will cure this weariness to look on her." So he prepares to "push away for fairy-land — for rainbow's end, in fairy land."After a long journey by horseback and by foot, he reaches the lone cottage, and there he finds — not a fairy queen or even a fairy princess, but a tired and lonely girl at her sewing who, come to find out, had been gazing longingly across the valley and wondering who lived in a house she had spotted.The narrator neglects to tell her that it is his house, for he has seen the futility of idle dreams of idealized faraway places. He returns home a wiser man. "Enough. Launching my yawl [figuratively] no more for fairy-land, I stick to the piazza. It is my box royal. . . . Yes, the scenery is magical — the illusion so complete.""The Bell Tower," which concludes the book, also ties its philosophical lesson up in a neat little bow: "And so pride went before the fall." This story is also a haunting tale, not so much by the events related, but in the poetic language Melville employs:"As all along where the pine tree falls, its dissolution leaves a mossy mount—last-flung shadow of the perished trunk; never lengthening, never lessening; unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun; shade immutable, and true gauge which cometh by prostration — so westward from what seems the stump, one steadfast spear of lichened ruin veins the plain."No speed-reading is possible here. The very language forces the reader to take it slow and drink in the deepest meaning.The other stories include "Bartleby the Scrivener," a perennial favorite, "Benito Cereno," which draws on Melville's years at sea, "The Lightning-Rod Man," an amusing vignette, and "The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles" — such an ironic title — which presents the Galapagos Islands in ten sketches. This latter has more in common with a long travel piece from The New Yorker than a short story. Melville's descriptions of the islands and various characters who dwelled there temporarily, seem more fact-based than imaginative. Two of the sketches have all the elements of good storytelling, but it is unclear whether the events portrayed actually occurred or were a seaman's tales. Regardless, "The Encantadas" is fascinating reading.The whole collection, in fact, is very much worth reading, and "The Piazza" seems to set a tone which gives a kind of unity to these otherwise very individual stories.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a collection of 6 shorter pieces, not a novel, published in 1856. As a whole I far prefer them to Moby Dick or Billy Budd. I don't care for "The Piazza" (although it does boast the rarity of a female character in Melville) or "The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles" (10 sketches about the Galapagos Islands that are far more "tell" than "show.") "The Lightening-Rod Man" about a pushy door-to-door salesman is mildly amusing and "The Bell-Tower" is a rather traditional story reminiscent of Poe or Hawthorne. But the prizes of this collection are the two novellas: Benito Cereno and Barteby, the Scrivener. Benito Cereno is a brilliant example of the "unreliable narrator" and the way that subverts the racist assumptions of the day (and the point of view character) is masterful. Barteby I've heard described as Kafkaesque. It's black comedy, but it is funny.