Literature, Identity and the English Channel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 1-9

3. Romantic Promontories

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 10-45

4. All at Sea

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 46-87

5. Les Fleurs du mal de mer

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 88-118

6. Modernity in Transit

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 119-154

7. Conclusion: In Between

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 155-159

8. The English Channel / La Manche: A Cultural Chronology, 1778–2001

   • Dominic Rainsford

   Pages 160-168

9. Back Matter

   Pages 169-191

   PDF

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.

• Europe
• identity
• Romanticism

DOMINIC RAINSFORD is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Policies and ethics