Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Traditions
- 2 Deserts and Forests in the Ocean
- 3 Almost Beyond the World
- 4 Realms in Abeyance
- 5 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- 6 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
- Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Traditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Traditions
- 2 Deserts and Forests in the Ocean
- 3 Almost Beyond the World
- 4 Realms in Abeyance
- 5 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- 6 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
- Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
[The Egyptians] also consider it a religious duty to avoid salt, so that neither cooked food nor bread seasoned with salt from the sea is served. Various reasons are given for this, but only one is true: their hatred for the sea as an element unrelated and alien, or rather completely hostile to man by nature.
Plutarch (c. 46–120), Quaestiones conviviales, 8, 8He will cast all our sins into the bottom of the sea.
Micah 7.19Classical Readings of the Sea
Mult fu hardiz, mult fu curteis
Cil ki fist nef premierement
E en mer se mist aval vent,
Terre querant qu'il ne veeit
E rivage qu'il ne saveit.
[How bold and skilled was the man who first made a ship and put to sea before the wind, seeking a land he could not see and a shore he could not know.]
Wace's (c. 1115–c. 1183) tribute to the audacity of the first seafarer is heir to a long literary tradition of uneasiness and ambiguity concerning the sea. The blend of admiration and incredulity betrays the narrator as an observer of the sea, an islander but a land-dweller. And although I believe that the parallel has not been noticed before, it should come as no surprise that another land-dweller, Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65), provided the source for the above passage from the Roman de Brut:
Audax nimium qui freta primus
rate tam fragili perfida rupit
terrasque suas post terga videns
animam levibus credidit auris,
dubioque secans aequora cursu
potuit tenui fidere ligno.
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- Information
- The Sea and Medieval English Literature , pp. 25 - 47Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007