The Sea and Medieval English Literature (Studies in Medieval Romance) (Volume 5)

A fresh and invigorating survey of the sea as it appears in medieval English literature, from romance to chronicle, hagiography to autobiography. 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. SEBASTIAN I. SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Introduction Englishness, Myth and Connectivity 1 Omissions and Slippages: A Biography of the Sea 16 1 Traditions Classical Readings of the Sea 25 From the Bible to the Fathers 34 A Note on English Writings before the Conquest 41 2 Deserts and Forests in the Ocean The End of the Desert Liquide: Benedeit's Voyage de Saint Brandan 48 Tristan's Bitter Sea of Romance 56 3 Almost Beyond the World Britain at the 'Laste Clif of Occean' 72 Burning Seas in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris 92 4 Realms in Abeyance The Matter of England: Land, Sea and Identity in the Horn Legend 100 The Kyndness of Strangers in Gower's Tale of Apollonius 113 5 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea A Cold Embrace: Jonah in the Belly of the Whale 119 Margery's Flight to Dansk 135 6 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea Territorial Waters: The Origin of a Contradiction 140 England Reaches for the Sea: The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye 145 7 Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings 161 Sebastian I. Sobecki. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 167-192) And Index.