The Imaginary Sea Voyage

Description

For centuries, humankind has wondered what is "out there" and has embarked on countless voyages to find out. This book traces the history and literature of the imaginary voyage--stories of mariners journeying through uncharted waters to find strange and marvelous sights. Well-told tales of adventurous journeys--The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea--conjure up images that transcend our mundane landscapes. Through the overlapping spheres of history, geography, cosmography and literary criticism, this book examines the mystique of what lies just over the horizon. The author traces the imaginary voyage genre of literature back to the ancient Egyptians and Homer up through the Age of Exploration and the modern lost civilization mode. Descriptions include, literary, historical and quasi-geographical notions of sea voyages to realms both imagined and actual with comparisons between the sea voyage and fictional and real space travel. It also includes a discussion of modern efforts to actualize the fantasy voyage, such as expeditionary cruise ships, explorer yachts, residential/condo ships, floating cities, flying boats, dirigibles and "aero-trekking". Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 3 One--Cataloguing Travels to Neverland: Attempts to Define the Genre 17 Two--Hear-Say and Heresy: Ancient and Classical Cosmographies, 500 B.C.-A.D. 500 34 Three--Blarney and Barnacles: Seafaring Legends of Celtic Exploration 63 Four--Vikings Westward: Empirical and Non-Empirical Lore 72 Five--Geography as Art and Dogma: Medieval Tales of Atlantic Isles 75 Six--From Leif to Christopher: Apocryphal Voyages from the Norse Discoveries to Columbus 82 Seven--Following the Codfish to Hy-Brasil: Speculative-but-Possible Explorations by the Portuguese and English 90 Eight--The Age of Discovery and Its Legacy: The World According to the Explorers and Mapmakers 94 Nine--The Imaginary Voyage Genre as Literature, Allegory and Fairy Tale 106 Ten--Chasing the Mirage: The Atlantis Theme and Its Progeny 132 Eleven--Lost Worlds and Hidden Civilizations: The Imaginary Island in Science Fiction and Fantasy, 1800-1950 145 Twelve--The Intergalactic Ocean: The Transference of Imaginary Sea Voyage Imagery to the Spaceship 164 Thirteen--Posted Missing: Marooned in Wonderland? 172 Fourteen--By Magic Carpet from the Mundane to the Fabulous: Trans-Oceanic Zeppelins, Flying Boats and Staged Tropical Paradises 192 Conclusion--Through the Looking-Glass and Back Home Again: "World-Building" and the Enduring Appeal of Imaginary Voyages and Realms 234 Appendix I--Dreamships and Cockleshells: The Vessels of Illusion 239 Appendix II--A Note on Spiritism, Fantasy, Credibility and Credulity 253 Selectively Annotated Bibliography 257 Index 273

Subjects