Description
Book SynopsisIn the ancient Mediterranean world, the sea was an essential domain for trade, cultural exchange, communication, exploration, and colonisation. In tandem with the lived reality of this maritime space, a parallel experience of the sea emerged in narrative representations from ancient Greece and Rome, of the sea as a cultural imaginary. This imaginary seems often to oscillate between two extremes: the utopian and the catastrophic; such representations can be found in narratives from ancient history, philosophy, society, and literature, as well as in their post-classical receptions.
Utopia can be found in some imaginary island paradise far away and across the distant sea; the sea can hold an unknown, mysterious, divine wealth below its surface; and the sea itself as a powerful watery body can hold a liberating potential. The utopian quality of the sea and seafaring can become a powerful metaphor for articulating political notions of the ideal state or for expressing an individual’s sense of hope and subjectivity. Yet the catastrophic sea balances any perfective imaginings: the sea threatens coastal inhabitants with floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes and sailors with storms and the accompanying monsters. From symbolic perspectives, the catastrophic sea represents violence, instability, the savage, and even cosmological chaos.
The twelve papers in this volume explore the themes of utopia and catastrophe in the liminal environment of the sea, through the lens of history, philosophy, literature and classical reception.
Contributors: Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar, Vilius Bartninkas, Aaron L. Beek, Ross Clare, Gabriele Cornelli, Isaia Crosson, Ryan Denson, Rhiannon Easterbrook, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz, Georgia L. Irby, Simona Martorana, Guy Middleton, Hamish Williams.
Table of ContentsIntroduction (Hamish Williams and Ross Clare)
Section 1: Ancient History and SocietyFrom the Edge of the Deep Green Sea: Tsunamis and Coastal Catastrophes in the Ancient Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean (Guy Middleton)
The Greek Notions of Sea Power (Vilius Bartninkas)
Plato Sailing Upstream: The Image of the Ship in the
Republic (Gabriele Cornelli)
Sailing to Find Utopia or Sailing to Found Utopia? The Pragmatic and Idealistic Pursuit of Ideal Cities in Greek and Roman Political Philosophy (Aaron L. Beek)
Ruling the Catastrophic Sea: Roman Law and the Gains of a Utopic Mediterranean (Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz)
Section 2: Ancient LiteratureThe Seas are Full of Monsters: Divine Utopia, Human Catastrophe (Georgia L. Irby)
Order Among Disorder: Poseidon’s Underwater Kingdom and Utopic Marine Environments (Ryan Denson)
The Women and the Sea: The Subjective Seascape in Ovid’s
Heroides (Simona Martorana)
The Anti-Tyrannical Adriatic in Lucan’s Civil War (Isaia Crosson)
Section 3: Classical ReceptionsHow to Detain a Tsunami: Impassable Boundaries against Ocean Chaos in Ancient and Modern Imaginaries (Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar)
Classical Dimensions of the Robinsonade Pantomime: Neptune, Aphrodite, and the Threat to Civilization (Rhiannon Easterbrook)
Minoan Utopias in British Fiction, after the Thalassocracy: Lawrence Durrell’s
The Dark Labyrinth and Robert Graves’
Seven Days in New Crete (Hamish Williams)
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