1st Edition
The Literary Beach History and Aesthetics of a Modern Topos
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.
List of Contributors
1. Carsten Meiner and Katrine Helene Andersen, “Introduction: The Literary Beach: History and Aesthetics of a Modern Topos”
2. Knut Ove Eliassen, “Topologies of the Beach”
3. Frits Andersen, “The Already Modern Beach. Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Sea Tales”
4. Christopher Messelt, “The Beach and the Modern Norwegian Novel”
5. Katrine Helene Andersen, “Between Topos and Heterotopia. Literary Representations of the Spanish Beach in Works by Carmen Laforet and Juan Goytisolo”
6. 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 Road”
7. Christian Dahl, “One Place, two Topoi: The Beach in Ancient Greek literature”
8. Maria Damkjær, “Cheapness, Predictability, and Cliché: Beaches in Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals
9. Charles Lock, “Words on the Beach: Riddles of the Unpainted Shore and the Wrapped Coast”
10. Morten Chemnitz and Carsten Meiner, “The Topological Poetics of the Beach in Marguerite Duras’ L’Amour and L’Été 80”
11. 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 Daughter
Index
Biography
Carsten Meiner is Professor of French at the University of Copenhagen.
Katrine Helene Andersen is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
