The Lure of the Sea: Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750-1840, The - Couverture souple

Corbin, Alain

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0140247998 ISBN 13 : 9780140247992

Editeur : Penguin Books, 1995

Synopsis

This is an account of how the pleasures of the seaside were discovered in the Western World. Based on the premiss that how we see the landscape over time is shaped not just by nature but also by the cultural baggage we bring to it, this book argues that with few exceptions, people living before the 18th century knew nothing of the attractions of the coast. The sea was perceived as sinister and unchanging, an unfathomable force inspiring horror, associated with floods, sea monsters and the like. With the Enlightenment, a change occurred. The book follows a course from a theocentric interpretation of the shore as the line drawn by God's finger after the Flood, through the sea as experienced by Neoclassical travellers on the Grand Tour, to the beloved sea of the Romantic poets and the growth of the popular seaside resort that came in their wake.

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture

The Lure of the Sea is a brilliant account of how the pleasures of the seaside were discovered in the western world, written by one of the most creative historians in Europe today. Well–illustrated and accessible, it charts the changes in the popular view of the shore and the rise of the coastal resort as a place of recreation and rest.

Corbin argues that with few exceptions people living before the eighteenth century knew nothing of the attractions of the coast, the visual delight of the sea, the desire to brave the force of the waves or to feel the coolness of sand against the skin. The image of the ocean in the popular consciousness was coloured by Biblical and mythical recollections of sea monsters, voracious whales and catastrophic floods.

Corbin shows how, with the Enlightenment, a profound change occurred in people′s attitudes towards the sea. During the most important period, between 1750 and 1840, the discovery of the seaside as a place of pleasure and relaxation led to the rapid growth of British coastal towns such as Brighton, followed by the other resorts in Europe, from Deauville to Marbella and the Greek Isles. With abundant references to the literature and visual arts of the period, Corbin describes the changing habits and fashions of visitors to these resorts, from the patients sent under doctors′ orders to bathe in ice–cold seawater, to the women bathers of the nineteenth century who avoided indiscreet gazes by entering the waves through specially designed wagons.

Présentation de l'éditeur

This wonderful book explores the dramatic change in Western attitude toward the sea and seaside pleasures that occurred between 1750 and 1840. Interest in travel; the arrival of landscape painting, geology, and natural theology; fashions in medicine and the advent of the bathing-machine; the emergence of Romanticism and the Sublime—these are only some of the elements that helped transform perceptions.
 
There was no sea in the Garden of Eden, and for centuries the Earth’s ocean was looked upon with hostility, as a chaotic remnant of the flood. But by the time Jane Austen wrote Sandition—perhaps the first ‘seaside’ novel—in 1817, the sea and shore had come to be viewed as something intensely and sensuously pleasurable, with beach holidays all the rage in new resorts from Brighton and Scarborough to Dieppe.
 
“A compact and brilliant taxonomy of the shifting meanings of the sea and shore.”— The New York Review of Books

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books
• Date d'édition: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140247998
• ISBN 13: 9780140247992
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 400