Chapter 2 - Chasing the Surf

Summary

Examining literary texts alongside contemporary legal and epistolary evidence regarding understandings and uses of seashores, Chapter 2 explains how a number of romances complement their larger themes with a concentration on the seaside as a simultaneously inviting and threatening space whose multifaceted nature as a geographical, political, and social boundary embodies the complex range of meanings embedded in the Middle English concept of “play” – a word that these texts often link with the seashore. Beaches, too, serve as stages upon which the romances act out their anxieties over the consequences of human economic endeavor. In Sir Amadace, Emaré, Sir Eglamour of Artois, and the Constance romances of Chaucer and Gower, shipwrecks are configured as opportunities for financial gain for scavengers and as mortal peril for sailors. Moreover, the coupling of the beach with concepts of play emerges in numerous scenes wherein beach-walking characters create – both in jest and in earnest – new identities for themselves, in order to elude past enemies or mistakes. My analysis thus explains how seaside scenes embody anxieties about human relationships with natural and divine forces.