The Oxford Book of the Sea

by JonathanRaban (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.24

  It is no suprise that one of the earliest works in English literature should be a poem about the sea: the sea has been a source of fascination from the earliest times and the Anglo Saxon poem The Seafarer is only the first in a long series of writings that ponder its mystery. A powerful and restless presence in real life, the sea is one of the most ubiquitous and protean symbols in literature, changing in response to shifts in sensibility and holding a mirror to all who confront it - Renaissance explorers and Augustan gentlemen, romantic outcasts and Victorian travellers, packet tourists and small-boat sailors, naturalists and novelists, poets and oceanographers: men and women in a state of wonder before the sea. The editor's introduction consists of an essay on the meaning of the sea in literature and the pieces he has chosen display the richness of writing in the tradition. Alongside extracts from the acknowledged marine masterpieces are many other contributions: Emily Dickenson's poem Exaltation is the Going ; a meditation on a seaside holiday by Larkin; Jane Austin's satirizing of Byron's romanticized sea; Thoreau's contemplation of monsters and lost anchors off Cape Cod; and Willard Bascom's description of breaking waves.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $3.24

  One of the earliest poems in the English language, The Seafarer , is about the sea. Britain is a maritime culture and it is difficult to think of its history without bringing to mind such figures as Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and Nelson. The language itself is suffused with obsolete nautical terms (aloof, taken-aback, above board), and the literature of the sea in both Britain and America is especially rich. In these extracts the sea assumes a variety of guises - from the scourge of small-boat adventurers to Matthew Arnold's Sea of Faith ; from the colonial road of 16th-century explorers to the fickle intimate of Hemingway's Old Man; from the Ancient Mariner's phantasmagoria to the wave-formations of modern oceanographers; and from the sublime spectacle viewed by Addison and the 18th-century Enlightenment to Edgar Allan Poe's maelstrom. Arranged in chronological order, the extracts form a history of preoccupations with and ideas about the sea. The Seafarer's theme of bleak exile gives way to the practical business of Renaissance explorers, and this in turn provides a subject and a range of metaphors for the metaphysical poets, Milton and Dryden. With the 18th-century sea travel becomes a more gentlemanly pursuit (although often a disagreeable one as Tobias Smollett discovers), but the subduable, if sometimes inconvenient sea is soon whipped up into an archetypal storm by the Romantics. The 19th-century is remarkable for the numbers of writers who turned professional sailors - Melville, Conrad and Masefield to name but three. In their fictions, and in the records of the later single-handed yachtsmen such as Joshua Slocum and Hilaire Belloc, the sea becomes a striking setting for heroism and adventure. In the late 20th-century these romances seem played out, and the fresh investigations into the mechanics and meaning of the sea have been made more by the poets and oceanographers.

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $13.28

  It is no surprise that one of the earliest works in English literature should be a poem about the sea: the sea has been a source of fascination from the earliest times, and the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Seafarer' is only the first in a long series of writings which ponder its mystery. A powerful and restless presence in real life, the sea is one of the most ubiquitous and protean symbols in literature, changing in response to shifts in sensibility, and holding a mirror to all who confront it - Renaissance explorers and Augustan gentlemen, Romantic outcasts and Victorian travellers, small-boat sailors, naturalists and novelists, poets and oceanographers: men and women in a state of wonder before the sea. Jonathan Raban brings a special awareness and knowledge to his role as editor; in the words of Colin Thubron, 'nobody of his generation writes more subtly or imaginatively on travel'. Raban's introduction constitutes an important essay on the meaning of the sea in literature, and the pieces he has chosen display the exhilarating richness of writing in the tradition. Alongside extracts from the acknowledged marine masterpieces are many unexpected delights: Emily Dickinson's affirmative poem 'Exhalation is the Going'; a meditation on a seaside holiday by Larkin; Jane Austen's tart satirizing of Byron's Romanticized sea; Thoreau's contemplation of monsters and lost anchors off Cape Cod; Willard Bascom's brilliantly observed description of breaking waves. As richly varied and enthralling as the sea itself, this sparkling collection spans the centuries from AD 900 to the present and forms a unique and important body of writing to delight in and admire.