English-language novella by Melville published 1856
For the comic book writer, see Benito Cereno (writer).
"Benito Cereno"
Short story by Herman Melville
Herman Melville in 1860, five years after the writing of "Benito Cereno".
Country
United States
Language
English
Genre(s)
Sea Adventure
Publication
Published in
Putnam's Monthly Magazine, The Piazza Tales
Publication type
magazine serialization, part of book
Publisher
Dix & Edwards
Publication date
October, November, December 1855 (serialization), May 1856 (American book), June 1856 (British book)
Part of a series on
Forced labour and slavery
Contemporary
Child labour
Child soldiers
Conscription
Debt
Forced marriage
Bride buying
Child marriage
Wife selling
Forced prostitution
Human trafficking
Peonage
Penal labour
Contemporary Africa
21st-century jihadism
Sexual slavery
Wage slavery
Historical
Antiquity
Egypt
Babylonia
Greece
Rome
Medieval Europe
Ancillae
Black Sea slave trade
Byzantine Empire
Kholop
Prague slave trade
Serfs
History
In Russia
Emancipation
Thrall
Venetian slave trade
Balkan slave trade
Muslim world
Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
Slavery in Al-Andalus
Baqt
Contract of manumission
Bukhara slave trade
Crimean slave trade
Khazar slave trade
Khivan slave trade
Ottoman Empire
Avret Esir Pazarları
Barbary Coast
slave trade
pirates
Sack of Baltimore
Slave raid of Suðuroy
Turkish Abductions
Concubinage
history
Ma malakat aymanukum
Avret Esir Pazarları
Harem
Abbasid harem
Ottoman Imperial Harem
Safavid harem
Qajar harem
Jarya/Cariye
Odalisque
Qiyan
Umm walad
Circassian slave trade
Saqaliba
Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
Slavery in Volga Bulgaria
21st century
Atlantic slave trade
Bristol
Brazil
Database
Dutch
Middle Passage
Nantes
New France
Panyarring
Spanish Empire
Slave Coast
Thirteen colonies
Topics and practice
Conscription
Ghilman
Mamluk
Devshirme
Blackbirding
Coolie
Corvée labor
Field slaves in the United States
Treatment
House slaves
Saqaliba
Slave market
Slave raiding
Child soldiers
White slavery
Naval
Galley slave
Impressment
Pirates
Shanghaiing
Slave ship
By country or region
Sub-Saharan Africa
Contemporary Africa
Trans-Saharan slave trade
Red Sea slave trade
Indian Ocean slave trade
Zanzibar slave trade
Angola
Chad
Comoros
Ethiopia
Mali
Mauritania
Niger
Nigeria
Seychelles
Somalia
Somali slave trade
South Africa
Sudan
Zanzibar
North and South America
Pre-Columbian America
Aztec
Americas indigenous
U.S. Natives
United States
Field slaves
female
Contemporary
maps
partus
prison labor
Slave codes
Treatment
interregional
Human trafficking
The Bahamas
Canada
Caribbean
Barbados
British Virgin Islands
Trinidad
Code Noir
Latin America
Brazil
Lei Áurea
Colombia
Cuba
Haiti
revolt
Restavek
(Encomienda)
Puerto Rico
East, Southeast, and South Asia
Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
Bhutan
Brunei
China
Booi Aha
Laogai
penal system
India
Debt bondage
Chukri System
Indonesia
Japan
comfort women
Korea
Kwalliso
Malaysia
Maldives
Slavery in the Mongol Empire
Thailand
Yankee princess
Vietnam
Australia and Oceania
Australia
Human trafficking
Blackbirding
Slave raiding in Easter Island
Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea
Blackbirding in Polynesia
Europe and North Asia
Sex trafficking in Europe
Britain
Denmark
Dutch Republic
Germany in World War II
Malta
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Spain
Sweden
North Africa and West Asia
Afghanistan
Algeria
Bahrain
Egypt
Human trafficking in the Middle East
Iran
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Libya
Morocco
Oman
Palestine
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Tunisia
Qatar
Yemen
United Arab Emirates
Religion
Bible
Christianity
Catholicism
Mormonism
Islam
Judaism
Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance
1926 Slavery Convention
Abolitionism
U.K.
U.S.
Abolitionists
Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention
Anti-Slavery International
Blockade of Africa
U.K.
U.S.
Colonization
Liberia
Sierra Leone
Compensated emancipation
Freedman
manumission
Freedom suit
Slave Power
Underground Railroad
songs
Slave rebellion
Slave Trade Acts
International law
Third Servile War
13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related
Common law
Indentured servitude
Unfree labour
Fugitive slaves
laws
Great Dismal Swamp maroons
List of slaves
owners
last survivors of American slavery
Marriage of enslaved people (United States)
Slave narrative
films
songs
Slave name
Slave catcher
Slave patrol
Slave Route Project
breeding
court cases
Washington
Jefferson
J.Q. Adams
Lincoln
Emancipation Proclamation
40 acres
Freedmen's Bureau
Iron bit
Emancipation Day
v
t
e
Benito Cereno is a novella by Herman Melville, a fictionalized account about the revolt on a Spanish slave ship captained by Don Benito Cereno, first published in three installments in Putnam's Monthly in 1855. The tale, slightly revised, was included in his short story collection The Piazza Tales that appeared in May 1856. According to scholar Merton M. Sealts Jr., the story is "an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South".[1] The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American author Ralph Ellison as an epigraph to his 1952 novel Invisible Man, excluding Cereno's answer, "The negro." Over time, Melville's story has been "increasingly recognized as among his greatest achievements".[2]
In 1799 off the coast of Chile, captain Amasa Delano of the American sealer and merchant ship Bachelor's Delight visits the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship apparently in distress. After learning from its captain Benito Cereno[3][4] that a storm has taken many crewmembers and provisions, Delano offers to help out. He notices that Cereno acts awkwardly passive for a captain and the slaves display remarkably inappropriate behavior, and though this piques his suspicion he ultimately decides he is being paranoid. When he leaves the San Dominick and captain Cereno jumps after him, he finally discovers that the slaves have taken command of the ship, and forced the surviving crew to act as usual. Employing a third-person narrator who reports Delano's point of view without any correction, the story has become a famous example of unreliable narration.
Much critical study has gone into the story's relation to the Toussaint Louverture-led slave rebellion of the 1790s in Saint-Domingue, as well as to Melville's use of one chapter from the historical Amasa Delano's Voyages of 1817, a source of such importance that "he must have written 'Benito Cereno' with Chapter 18 constantly open before him."[5] The novella's "unreliable, even deceptive, narration" continues to cause misunderstanding.[6] Many reviewers of The Piazza Tales cited the novella as one of the highlights in the collection. Melville biographer Hershel Parker calls it "an intensely controlled work, formally one of the most nearly perfect things Melville ever did."[7]
^Sealts (1988), 94
^Delbanco (2005), 230
^Benito Cerreño is the Spanish spelling: Son's baptismal certificate
^Gazeta de México del sábado 17 de octubre de 1801 "La Fragata Tres Marías, su Capitán y Maestre Don Benito Cerreño"
BenitoCereno is a novella by Herman Melville, a fictionalized account about the revolt on a Spanish slave ship captained by Don BenitoCereno, first published...
achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "BenitoCereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands. (Billy...
to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "BenitoCereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured...
1963. Street singer, The Threepenny Opera, Arena Stage, 1963. Babu, BenitoCereno, American Place Theatre, New York City, beginning 1963, later produced...
adaptations of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the third piece, "BenitoCereno," was a stage adaptation of the novella by Herman Melville. The Old...
Italian film BenitoCereno, a novella by Herman Melville Benito Juárez (disambiguation) Bonito, fish in the family Scombridae Don Benito, a town and municipality...
The Immoralist Michael Bouwerie Lane Theatre 1964 The Old Glory Don BenitoCereno Theater at St. Clement's Church 1965 Good Day The Young Men Cherry Lane...
Doug TenNapel, 1999, ISBN 1-58240-680-4) Hector Plasm: De Mortuis (by BenitoCereno and illustrated by Nate Bellegarde, June 2006) Iron West (by Doug TenNapel...
Glory, The: Endecott and the Red Cross; My Kinsman, Major Molineux; and BenitoCereno. (directors note) Rothenstein, Julian (2000). The Paradox Box: Optical...
Delano's account of it became the basis for Herman Melville's novella "BenitoCereno", which was published in 1855. After his maritime adventures, Amasa...
2014. Retrieved 12 June 2014. Melville, Herman (1990). Bartleby and BenitoCereno. New York: Dover Thrift Editions. p. 34. ISBN 9780486264738. "Soul Asylum...
Vacation by Jules Verne The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin BenitoCereno by Herman Melville The Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child...
but ends up working with Tesla. Tales From the Bully Pulpit (2004) by BenitoCereno is a graphic novel containing the time travel adventures of Thomas Edison...
occurs at the far right. Translation of Gesner's Latin passage given in: BenitoCereno. "Burgeoning Lads of Science". Gesner's artist told him "he had received...
Serge Roullet, 96, French film director and screenwriter (The Wall, BenitoCereno). Baxtiyor Sayfullayev, 71, Uzbek politician, minister of culture (2012–2020)...
Verri) to 2015 He was a real sigma. For his version of Herman Melville's BenitoCereno (Marsilio, 2012), Ballerini sought to rework the lexical and syntactic...
Pulpit is a graphic novel released October 25, 2004. It was written by BenitoCereno, illustrated by Graeme MacDonald, and distributed by Image Comics. The...
Norton Billy Budd and Other Tales (including Bartleby, the Scrivener and BenitoCereno) by Herman Melville The Birds and Other Plays (The Knights, Peace, The...
them to the Land of Israel. Herman Melville, early in his novella “BenitoCereno”, provides much description of the strange behavior and appearance of...
ISBN 1-6070-6355-7) SuperPatriot: War on Terror #1–4 (with E. J. Su; BenitoCereno is credited for "script assist" in issue #3, 2004–2007) Masters of the...
World of Kurt Weill (Lotte Leyna; February 24, 1967) The Old Glory: BenitoCereno [Herman Melville] (Roscoe Lee Browne, Frank Langella; March 24, 1967)...