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Billy Budd, Foretopman

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | 694 words | Copyright

Billy Budd, Foretopman (written 1891, published 1924), a novella by H. Melville.

Billy, ‘the handsome sailor’, wrongly accused by the satanic master-at-arms Claggart and unable to defend himself verbally because of a stammer, strikes Claggart dead. After being tried by the liberal Captain Vere, Billy is hanged, his last words being ‘God bless Captain Vere!’ Then, in apparently Christ-like apotheosis, ‘the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God’, and the sailors question whether Billy had actually died. Britten's setting of Billy Budd (1951) has become one of the most admired operas in the modern repertoire.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Billy Budd, Foretopman." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Billy Budd, Foretopman." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BillyBuddForetopman.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Billy Budd, Foretopman." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BillyBuddForetopman.html

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