This dissertation intends on investigating the historicity of the literary form of Moby Dick, by examining how epic and tragedy act as plot-organizing principles and coordinate the thematic discussions in the book, which involve diverse intellectual and religious traditions, like puritanism and the enlightment philosophy. It also analyzes how the auctor raises questions regarding a national American identity, as he presents, both in Ahab and Ishmael, alternatives to the traditional image of the american hero characterized by a pre-lapsarian innocence, as described in the essays of the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. If tragedy manifests itself in the novel mantaining its essential features through a dialogue with the plays of Shakespeare, the epic, which relates to Ishmael s speech and the description of the savage characters aboard the ship, does it on more subtle and diffuse ways, which are related to an attempt to restore a feeling of totality in life that was lost in modernity. It also appears articulated to other types of speech, especially the encyclopaedic discourse and the form of the essay.