| Description |
xviii, 524 pages ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Anon. from 'The Seafarer' -- Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599). from The Faerie Queene -- Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616). Edward Hay's account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage to. Newfoundland from Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation -- The English Bible (1611). from Psalm 107 -- George Chapman (1559-1634). from Homer's Odysseys -- Samuel Purchas (c.1575-1626). from Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes -- John Donne (1572-1631). 'The Storme'. 'The Calme' -- John Milton (1608-1674). from 'Lycidas'. from The Book of Common Prayer -- John Dryden (1631-1700). from Annus Mirabilis -- Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (c.1624-1674). 'The Sea-goddess' -- Charles Cotton (1630-1687). 'The Tempest' -- Joseph Addison (1672-1719). from The Spectator -- Daniel Defoe (c. 1660- 1731). from Robinson Crusoe. from A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). from Journal of a Voyage -- James Thomson (1700-1748) |
| Summary |
Jonathan Raban brings a special awareness and knowledge to his role as editor; in the words of Colin Thubron, 'nobody of his generation writes more subtly or imaginatively on travel'. Raban's introduction constitutes an important essay on the meaning of the sea in literature, and the pieces he has chosen display the exhilarating richness of writing in the tradition. Alongside extracts from the acknowledged marine masterpieces are many unexpected delights: Emily Dickinson's affirmative poem 'Exaltation is the Going'; a meditation on a seaside holiday by Larkin; Jane Austen's tart satirizing of Byron's Romanticized sea; Thoreau's contemplation of monsters and lost anchors off Cape Cod; Willard Bascom's brilliantly observed description of breaking waves. As richly varied and enthralling as the sea itself, this sparkling collection spans the centuries from AD 900 to 1990 and forms a unique and important body of writing to delight in and admire |
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It is no surprise that one of the earliest works in English literature should be a poem about the sea: the sea has been a source of fascination from the earliest times, and the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Seafarer' is only the first in a long series of writings which ponder its mystery. A powerful and restless presence in real life, the sea is one of the most ubiquitous and protean symbols in literature, changing in response to shifts in sensibility, and holding a mirror to all who confront it--Renaissance explorers and Augustan gentlemen, Romantic outcasts and Victorian travellers, packet tourists and small-boat sailors, naturalists and novelists, poets and oceanographers: men and women in a state of wonder before the sea |
| Analysis |
English literature Special subjects Oceans |
| Bibliography |
Includes index |
| Notes |
Also issued online |
| Subject |
American literature.
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English literature.
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Ocean travel -- Literary collections.
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Ocean -- Literary collections.
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Sea poetry, American.
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Sea poetry, English.
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Sea stories, American.
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Sea stories, English.
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Seafaring life -- Literary collections.
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| Genre/Form |
Literature.
|
| Author |
Raban, Jonathan.
|
| LC no. |
91025929 |
| ISBN |
019214197X |
|
9780192141972 |
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