Writing the Shore

The Shore and the Self - the Floating Meaning of the Coastline in British and American Literature

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Literature - Basics, grade: 1,0, University of Constance (Literature / Anglistics), language: English, abstract: The study discusses several theoretical approaches towards an understanding of the shore as a cultural phenomenon. It seeks to combine approaches by Carl Schmitt, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari with narrative texts by Daniel Defoe, Osacar Wilde, Nathaniel Hawthorne and others. In a seperate chapter it offers a short cultural history of the view on the sea as it has shaped oriental perception from biblical and classical texts until today. The main aim is to unravel the mode in which liminal landscapes and liminal characters influence each other as well as an attempt at historizising the narrative constructions that take place on the fascinating and ambivalent border between the liquid and the solid state.