The Sea and Medieval English Literature
Series: Studies in Medieval Romance 5
Publisher: D.S.Brewer; D.S. Brewer
Published: January 17, 2008
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9781843841371
Subjects: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; Medieval; Literature & Fiction / Literary Criticism; Literary Criticism & Collections / Medieval; Literary studies: general
Description: As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Englishness, Myth and Connectivity		1; title: Omissions and Slippages: A Biography of the Sea		16; title: 1		Traditions; title: Classical Readings of the Sea		25; title: From the Bible to the Fathers		34; title: A Note on English Writings before the Conquest		41; title: 2		Deserts and Forests in the Ocean; title: The End of the Desert Liquide: Benedeit's Voyage de Saint Brandan		48; title: Tristan's Bitter Sea of Romance		56; title: 3		Almost Beyond the World; title: Britain at the 'Laste Clif of Occean'		72; title: Burning Seas in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris		92; title: 4		Realms in Abeyance; title: The Matter of England: Land, Sea and Identity in the Horn Legend		100; title: The Kyndness of Strangers in Gower's Tale of Apollonius		113; title: 5		Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; title: A Cold Embrace: Jonah in the Belly of the Whale		119; title: Margery's Flight to Dansk		135; title: 6		A Thousand Furlongs of Sea; title: Territorial Waters: The Origin of a Contradiction		140; title: England Reaches for the Sea: The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye		145; title: 7              Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings		161