Plagiarism in Typee: A Peep at Herman Melville’s Lifting from Travel Narratives
Keywords:
Herman Melville, cannibalism, autobiography, plagiarism, travel narrative, Marquesas IslandsAbstract
Herman Melville’s first book Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life During a Four Months’ Residence in the Valley of the Marquesas (1846) made him famous and along with his next narrative Omoo (1847) he maintained an audience both in England and the United States, even though both books were controversial. In Typee, the combination of his plagiarism of obscure travel narratives and his cheap attempts to sensationalize his brief visit on the island of Nuka Hiva with titillating imaginings of beautiful loose native women along with his melodramatic captivity narrative and the irrational fear of anthropophagy reveal, this paper will argue, that in Typee Melville wrote in the main sensational hackwork.
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