Literature, Identity and the English Channel: Narrow Seas Expanded [Hardcover]

This book concerns the significance of the English Channel in British and French literature from the 1780s onwards: a timely subject given the intense debates in progress about the actual and desired relationships between Britain and mainland Europe. The book addresses contemporary authors who use the Channel as a focus for cultural comment, comparing their approaches to those of earlier writers, from Charlotte Smith and Chateaubriand through Hugo and Dickens to historians and travel writers of the 1950s and 1980s.Acknowledgements Introduction Romantic Promontories All at Sea Les Fleurs du mal de mer Modernity in Transit Conclusion: In Between The English Channel/La Manche: A Cultural Chronology, 1778-2001 Notes IndexDOMINIC RAINSFORD is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.