Content area
Abstract
“All the Derelicts of the Seas,” examines the space of the seaport within 19th and early 20th century U.S. literature. Through the spatial lens of the port, texts from the U.S. canon become transnational as they open up to world histories and cultural flows. In turn, this creates a port literature that as a subgenre of American literature is both intellectually distinctive and aesthetically interesting. Port literature engages in aspects of narrative play, as stylistically its genre takes on various forms such as, the picaresque, the episodic, the travelogue, melodrama and autobiography. Also as a form of realism it crosses into and incorporates a range of fields including, history, ethnography, and archeology. This study of the port fills a gap within American Studies and maritime literature through the advancement of port theory. Port theory follows the transfer of cultural and material capital off of the ship and documents how this transfer influences the national imaginary in the form of narrative. The exploration of the cultural geographies of port space by U.S. writers produces a subset of American literature that is transnational in scope. Port theory incorporates a transnational context in which to examine the material history of ports as porous borders, how ports are imagined and represented in the form of narrative and ultimately, how ports influence the form and content of varied texts. By introducing the port as a locus of industrial capital at the turn of the century, port theory applies a transnational aspect to the study of American modernity. The U.S. as a port of call is built upon a port culture, which reveals an American identity that is unstable and less fixed than generally acknowledged, as it is based on a system of circulation and trade. Furthermore, this study renders the contemporary seaport—as a forgotten space of entry—relevant in a post 9/11 age intent on securing the metropolitan center.
