A content analysis of the difference in critical perception of English and American critics of the ambiguous homoerotic elements in Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)'

The dissertation begins with the evolution of the 1962 Sealts Reading and Genetic text of Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). The critical and social context is discussed in which, Brown feels, there is a multiplicity of response to the homoerotic. Brown's thematic statement is this: “It is the contention of this study that there is a core element of Melville's work that has been overlooked, ignored or denied, yet discerned and felt by an increasing number of critics, which, if acknowledged would make a meaningful difference in our view of his work” (14).; The bulk of this work, Chapter IV THE ESSAYS, is devoted to an analyzation of thirty-six critiques, by twenty-seven American critics, and nine English critics, all of whom confront, in one way or another and to a greater of lesser degree, the ambiguous homoerotic element in Billy Budd. These homoerotic elements are presented in Sub-Problem 4, and are culled from the critical literature of the field and from the writer's own response. The reader response theories of Louise Rosenblatt, “the lived through experience of the text,” are central to the study and underlie the interpretation in Chapter IV and the summarization of Chapter V.; The method employed in the analyzation of the essays is based on MIDD, The Modes of Inquiry Discourse Descriptors, developed by Carl P. Schmidt and modified by the writer. These “descriptors” or “categories” are ways in which the critic focuses his attention and that which he focuses it upon. The first half of each essay is a compilation of sentences from the critique that demonstrate a particular category. Reading these sentences a reader gets a sense of the article and of the critics stance. The second half of each essay is an interpretation of the sentences compiled and the critic's approach to the homoerotic elements. The total number of critical responses in each category are tabulated in The Appendices and the results are used to aid in the discussion of the English and American difference.