The Inner Sea
Maritime Literary Culture in Early Modern Portugal
Published on 7. September 2022
Book
Hardback
232 pages
978-0-226-82046-0 (ISBN)
Description
An expansive consideration of how nautical themes influenced literature in early modern Portugal.
In this book, Josiah Blackmore considers how the sea and seafaring shaped literary creativity in early modern Portugal during the most active, consequential decades of European overseas expansion. Blackmore understands "literary" in a broad sense, including a diverse archive spanning genres and disciplines-epic and lyric poetry, historical chronicles, nautical documents, ship logs, shipwreck narratives, geographic descriptions, and reference to texts of other seafaring powers and literatures of the period-centering on the great Luis de Camoes, arguably the sea poet par excellence of early modern Europe.
Blackmore shows that the sea and nautical travel for Camoes and his contemporaries were not merely historical realities; they were also principles of cultural creativity that connected to larger debates in the widening field of the maritime humanities. For Blackmore, the sea, ships, and nautical travel unfold into a variety of symbolic dimensions, and the oceans across the globe that were traversed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries correspond to vast reaches within the literary self. The sea and seafaring were not merely themes in textual culture but were also principles that created individual and collective subjects according to oceanic modes of perception. Blackmore concludes with a discussion of depth and sinking in shipwreck narratives as metaphoric and discursive dimensions of the maritime subject, foreshadowing empire's decline.
In this book, Josiah Blackmore considers how the sea and seafaring shaped literary creativity in early modern Portugal during the most active, consequential decades of European overseas expansion. Blackmore understands "literary" in a broad sense, including a diverse archive spanning genres and disciplines-epic and lyric poetry, historical chronicles, nautical documents, ship logs, shipwreck narratives, geographic descriptions, and reference to texts of other seafaring powers and literatures of the period-centering on the great Luis de Camoes, arguably the sea poet par excellence of early modern Europe.
Blackmore shows that the sea and nautical travel for Camoes and his contemporaries were not merely historical realities; they were also principles of cultural creativity that connected to larger debates in the widening field of the maritime humanities. For Blackmore, the sea, ships, and nautical travel unfold into a variety of symbolic dimensions, and the oceans across the globe that were traversed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries correspond to vast reaches within the literary self. The sea and seafaring were not merely themes in textual culture but were also principles that created individual and collective subjects according to oceanic modes of perception. Blackmore concludes with a discussion of depth and sinking in shipwreck narratives as metaphoric and discursive dimensions of the maritime subject, foreshadowing empire's decline.
Reviews / Votes
"The Inner Sea is a book that ultimately questions not only the importance of the sea and navigation in Portuguese literature but also one of the fundamental mythopoetic components of universal literature, what Josiah Blackmore calls 'the intellectual and literary histories of the human-ocean encounter.' The study of this encounter is generative in opening up a possible dialogue between premodern literature and ecocriticism. . . The Inner Sea will be a fundamental map for charting the still underexplored Lusophone premodern archive." * Modern Philology * "Blackmore sounds the depths of Portugal's literary connection to maritime voyages in his insightful study The Inner Sea. . . a must-read for scholars of early modern Iberian literature." * Renaissance Quarterly * "The Inner Sea makes a singular and original contribution by surveying the contours of a maritime literary consciousness, testing both its temporal and expressive limits. Blackmore reads with a rare sensitivity for poetic texts, as he patiently and carefully unfolds the various layers of what it means for Portuguese writers such as Luis de Camoes to 'stand in the middle of the sea.' The results of Blackmore's exploration are impressive and convincing." -- Vincent Barletta, author of Rhythm: Form and Dispossession "In our fruitful age of global studies and the West's fascination with Africa and India, The Inner Sea could not be more timely. Blackmore offers readers a stunning account of Da Gama's unprecedented voyages from Portugal to Africa in 1497, reaching India in 1498, and their profound meaning. These journeys for the first time transformed a world divided by the seas into an interconnected one, not only reaching South Africa, but India as well. The Inner Sea is richly documented by many sources that the author has chosen to accompany his dazzling readings of Camoes's extraordinary maritime epic adventure, Os Lusiadas." -- Marina S. Brownlee, Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature, Princeton University "Blackmore is already well known for his work on maritime topics in Portuguese literature. Tacking slightly from his earlier scholarly books, his beautifully written The Inner Sea focuses on some of the profound cultural consequences of Portuguese dominance on the global ocean during the early modern period. Blackmore documents a process of internalization of the sea in Portuguese daily life that is evident in many kinds of documents of the times, including literary texts. He asserts that 'ships wield subject-forming power' and he proceeds to show his reader how the multiple subjectivities formed in the effort to tame the sea flourish in the literary world of Luis Vaz de Camoes and others. Blackmore provides excellent English translations for the Portuguese texts he cites, many of which are his own, and the figures that illustrate his book are splendid." -- Elizabeth B. Davis, The Ohio State UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
9 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-82046-0 (9780226820460)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2022
University of Chicago Press
€42.99
Available for download
Person
Josiah Blackmore is the Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal at Harvard University. Among his books are Moorings: Portuguese Expansion and the Writing of Africa, Manifest Perdition: Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire, and The Songs of Antonio Botto.