Billy Budd | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 31 pages of analysis & critique of Billy Budd.
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Billy Budd | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 31 pages of analysis & critique of Billy Budd.
This section contains 7,591 words
(approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Nathaniel M. Floyd

SOURCE: “Billy Budd: A Psychological Autopsy,” in American Imago, Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring, 1977, pp. 28–49.

In the following essay, Floyd offers a psychological interpretation of Billy Budd.

“I see your drift. Ay, there is a mystery … a ‘mystery of iniquity,’ a matter for psychologic theologians to discuss.”

—Captain Vere in Billy Budd, Sailor Herman Melville

“Keep still! … you must keep quite still now, or your screaming will frighten the horses even more, and the coachman will not be able to hold them at all.”

—Emmy Von N. (speaking of the origin of her stammering) in “Studies in Hysteria” Sigmund Freud

Foreword

With so much written about Billy Budd, so much subjected to analysis and interpretation, why should a psychologist come to meddle here in this, perhaps, the most poetic of Melville's work? Is it the attraction of an unfinished piece, still germinal and growing? Cut off from the author's labor...

(read more)

This section contains 7,591 words
(approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Nathaniel M. Floyd
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Critical Essay by Nathaniel M. Floyd from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.