Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Traditions
- 2 Deserts and Forests in the Ocean
- 3 Almost Beyond the World
- 4 Realms in Abeyance
- 5 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- 6 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
- Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Traditions
- 2 Deserts and Forests in the Ocean
- 3 Almost Beyond the World
- 4 Realms in Abeyance
- 5 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- 6 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
- Epilogue: The Tempest's Many Beginnings
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
Robert Browning, A Toccata of Galuppi's (1855)La puissance des armes requiert non seulement que le roi soit plutôt fort sur la terre, mais elle veut en outre qu'il soit puissant sur la mer.
Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), Testament politiqueTerritorial Waters: The Origin of a Contradiction
At first glance, the concept of territorial waters must be a paradox. ‘Territory’, with its etymology rooted in terra, denotes ground, firm land, which contrasts sharply with the fluidity of ‘waters’. The term ‘territorial waters’ denotes the theoretical and, at times, practical imposition of political claims on spaces that seem ill-equipped to meet them, with the result of yielding, at best, a mixed metaphor (one only has to think of Xerxes' whipping of the sea). And yet, wars have been fought for the strategic or economic value of water territory, and even to this day there exists no universally accepted agreement on the precise extent and definition of ‘territorial waters’. The term belongs to the world of legal taxonomy, and its exact demarcation in early fifteenth-century England is vital for the development of the sea's perception in political thought and literature.
Following the Roman understanding of the sea as land, the proto- egalitarian concept of the natural freedom of the seas was first challenged as a legal notion by the Glossators working in the University of Bologna during the twelfth century.
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- The Sea and Medieval English Literature , pp. 140 - 160Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007