Words on the Beach: Riddles of the Unpainted Shore and the Wrapped Coast

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Abstract

This chapter examines the metonyms for the beach such as ‘shore’ and ‘coast’. A combination of an etymological enquiry and a study of the literary representation of a site reveals that the beach turns out to be as unstable to contemplate linguistically as it is geographically. Works by Matthew Arnold, Eliot, Hardy, Erskine Childers and Charles M. Doughty serve as points of departure for a consideration of how these words acquire meaning. Is the meaning of the literary representations of the beach, with its metonyms ‘shore’ and ‘coast’, primarily metonymical or metaphorical? And does the literary beach exist independently of the real-world beach? The complexity and elasticity of the beach are precisely the result of a negotiation between metaphor and metonymy. The chapter shows how the previously mentioned authors provide words to a beach that is formless and lineless. Both shore and coast are easily defined as geographical zones that themselves draw a line and can be walked, whereas the beach is inaccessible to both measurement and representation and therefore always leaves something to the imagination.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelThe Literary Beach
RedaktørerCarsten Meiner, Katrine Helene Andersen
Antal sider17
ForlagRoutledge
Publikationsdato2024
ISBN (Trykt) 9781032526744
ISBN (Elektronisk)9781003407805
StatusUdgivet - 2024

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