The idea of nature in "Benito Cereno."

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1993 by Terry J. Martin

the negresses used their utmost influence to have the deponent

made away with; that, in the various acts of murder, they sang

songs and danced--not gaily, but solemnly; and before the

engagement with the boats, as well as during the action, they sang

melancholy songs to the negroes, and that this melancholy tone

was more inflaming than a different one would have been, and was

so intended; that all this is believed, because the negroes have said

it. (112) Both passages are absent from Melville's source. (3) Melville significantly to Captain Delano what was observed by the crew in the original account. See Delano 75.

WORKS CITED

Delano, Amasa. A Narrative of Voyages. Boston, 1817. Rpt. A "Benito Cereno" Handbook. Ed. Seymour L. Gross. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1965. 71-98. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Richard Poirier. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. 2-36. Emery, Alan Moore. "|Benito Cereno' and Manifest Destiny." Nineteenth-century Fiction 39 (1984): 48-68. Hayford, Harrison, et al., eds. The Writings of Herman Melville. Northwestern-Newberry Ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP and Newberry Library. 12 vols. to date. 1968-. Kavanagh, James H. "|That Hive of Subtlety': |Benito Cereno' as Critique of Ideology." Bucknell Review 29 (1984): 127-57. Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. The Piazza Talcs and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. Hayford et al. 9: 46-117. ---. Moby-Dick: An Authoritative Text. Norton Critical Ed. Ed. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York: Norton, 1967. Phillips, Barry. "'The Good Captain': A Reading of |Benito Cereno.'" Texas Studies in Literature and Language 4 (1962): 188-97. Zagarell, Sandra A. "Reenvisioning America: Melville's |Benito Cereno.'" ESQ 30 (1984): 245-59.