Alterity in American literature: the faces of the Other in Melville’s Moby-Dick and Billy Budd

Abstract

This paper discusses the question of the expression of alterity as “faces” in Herman Melville’s two masterpieces, Moby-Dick; or,The Whale and Billy Budd, Sailor. The issue of otherness and the relationships between subjects stands as a major problem in literature, but also in philosophy and ethics, as it also logically entails a questioning about identity and sameness