1st Edition

The Literary Beach History and Aesthetics of a Modern Topos

Edited By Carsten Meiner, Katrine Helene Andersen Copyright 2024
186 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

186 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

186 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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... Read more

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.