Littoral Space and Self-Discovery: Stanley Middleton’s Holiday, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, and Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach

dc.contributor.authorMohácsi, Eszter
dc.date.accessioned2021-12-05T23:03:39Z
dc.date.available2021-12-05T23:03:39Z
dc.date.issued2021-12-05
dc.description.abstractThe point of departure of this essay is that seaside resort towns and hotels function as in-between, liminal spaces for visitors, while the unknown, boundless, and mysterious sea often acquires a metaphorical meaning as a symbol of monsters, madness, death, desire, and the unconscious. Thus, the liminal space of the seaside serves as an appropriate setting that facilitates self-realization. The three novels selected for study here are set in British seaside towns in the 1960s-1970s, and present their respective protagonists’ struggle with their past memories and traumas. In Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (2007), the newlyweds get a chance of self-understanding, however, they fail at communicating their fears and desires. Ultimately, the seaside remains a symbol of misunderstandings and trauma as well as the dividing line between the times before and after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. By contrast, the protagonists in Stanley Middleton’s novel, Holiday (1974), and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (1978) achieve self-awareness through either a time-travel that allows for re-living the past or a journey to the unconscious, respectively. Nevertheless, these novels also end on an ambiguous tone, and the question whether real self-understanding has been attained remains open. (EM)en
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dc.identifier.citationHungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 27 No. 2 (2021) ,
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.30608/HJEAS/2021/27/2/10
dc.identifier.eissn2732-0421
dc.identifier.issn1218-7364
dc.identifier.issue2
dc.identifier.jtitleHungarian Journal of English and American Studies
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2437/326095en
dc.identifier.volume27
dc.languageen
dc.relationhttps://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/article/view/10407
dc.rights.accessOpen Access
dc.rights.ownerHungarian Journal of English and American Studies
dc.subjectlittoral spaceen
dc.subjecttraumaen
dc.subjectnostalgiaen
dc.subjectliminalityen
dc.subjectself-discoveryen
dc.titleLittoral Space and Self-Discovery: Stanley Middleton’s Holiday, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, and Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beachen
dc.typefolyóiratcikkhu
dc.typearticleen
dc.type.detailedidegen nyelvű folyóiratközlemény hazai lapbanhu
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