Monograph

Publication year: 2011

ISBN: 978-90-420-3381-8

eISBN: 978-94-012-0079-0

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401200790

Title of series: Postmodern studies

Number in series: 47

Abstract: 

From Daniel Defoe to Joseph Conrad, from Virginia Woolf to Derek
Walcott, the sea has always been an inspiring setting and a powerful
symbol for generations of British and Anglophone writers. Seaing through the Past
is the first study to explicitly address the enduring relevance of the
maritime metaphor in contemporary Anglophone fiction through in-depth
readings of fourteen influential and acclaimed novels published in the
course of the last three decades. The book trenchantly argues that in
contemporary fiction, maritime imagery gives expression to
postmodernism’s troubled relationship with historical knowledge, as
theorised by Hayden White, Linda Hutcheon, and others. The texts in
question are interpreted against the backdrop of four aspects of
metahistorical problematisation. Thus, among others, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea (1978) is read in the context of auto/biographical writing, John Banville’s The Sea (2005) as a narrative of personal trauma, Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) as investigating the connection between discourses of origin and the politics of power, and Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts (1997) as opening up a postcolonial perspective on the sea and history. Persuasive and topical, Seaing through the Past offers a compelling guide to the literary oceans of today

Harvard Citation style: Rostek, J. (2011) Seaing through the Past: Postmodern Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401200790

APA Citation style: Rostek, J. (2011). Seaing through the Past: Postmodern Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Editions Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401200790