This article deals with the retranslation of literary works from a theoretical and practical perspective. In order to establish the theoretical principles required, we develop the six textual and contextual variables and criteria typology proposed by Alvstad and Assis (2015), based on the traditional “Five W ́s and One H” approach, which help to analyze at different internal and external translating levels the retranslations at stake. We therefore establish what retranslation is, who retranslates, and when, where, why, and how retranslations are done. Next, every one of those six variables is studied and collated in relation with the eighteen retranslations of Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851) published in Spain since the publication of the first translation in 1940. The analyses of how those six criteria act in the different retranslations of the novel allow, first, to conceptualize and systematize the retranslation occurrence; and then, we study the information about the impact and reception of Moby-Dick in Spain provided by those eighteen retranslations appeared in eighty years.