Literary Beach

History and Aesthetics of a Modern Topos

AvCarsten Meiner,Katrine Helene Andersen

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

Del i serien Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature

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Beskrivning

As a geo-historical place, the beach integrates a variety of characteristics and functions so multiple that they tend to contradict each other. The beach is both a place of work and trade but also of leisure; it is both a place of therapy and health but also of migration, war, and death; it is a place of mass tourism and boredom but also the place of experiencing the Other; it is a public place but also an uncivilized and desolate place.This book studies the literary representation of the beach from ancient Greek literature up until today, drawing on English, French, Italian, American, and Spanish literatures from various periods and genres and presenting multiple ways of comparing and understanding literary beaches as a ubiquitous literary phenomenon. It demonstrates how the literary beach as a both geo-historical place and as an aesthetic literary commonplace has been a constant and privileged resource for the analysis of more general existential, sociological, and moral problems. This is the case when for instance the Tahitian beach becomes the place of the "already modern" in Stevenson's tales, or when the Italian beach becomes a question of modern feminism in Ferrante.In this sense, literature expands the local or national beach by articulating its transnational complexities.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2025-09-28
Mått:152 x 229 x 10 mm
Vikt:340 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature
Antal sidor:176
Förlag:Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN:9781032526744

Utforska kategorier

Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur
Kulturvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Hydrologi inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Mer om författaren

Carsten Meiner is Professor of French at the University of Copenhagen. Katrine Helene Andersen is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Innehållsförteckning

List of Contributors1. Carsten Meiner and Katrine Helene Andersen, “Introduction: The Literary Beach: History and Aesthetics of a Modern Topos”2. Knut Ove Eliassen, Topologies of the Beach3. Frits Andersen, The Already Modern Beach. Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Sea Tales4. Christopher Messelt, The Beach and the Modern Norwegian Novel5. Katrine Helene Andersen, Between Topos and Heterotopia. Literary Representations of the Spanish Beach in Works by Carmen Laforet and Juan Goytisolo6. Tore Rye Andersen, Sous la Plage, les Pavés! The Beach between Utopia and Dystopia in Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road7. Christian Dahl, One Place, two Topoi: The Beach in Ancient Greek literature8. Maria Damkjær, Cheapness, Predictability, and Cliché: Beaches in Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals9. Charles Lock, Words on the Beach: Riddles of the Unpainted Shore and the Wrapped Coast10. Morten Chemnitz and Carsten Meiner, The Topological Poetics of the Beach in Marguerite Duras’ L’Amour and L’Été 8011. Pia Schwarz Lausten, The Birth of a Beach Worm. The Beach as a Catalyst for Memories and Reflections on Female Identity in Elena Ferrante’s The Lost DaughterIndex