Abstract
Featuring prominently in the romance imagination as terrifying obstacles in the hero’s path, shipwrecks are nevertheless often presented from the salvager’s perspective. Romances abound with knights, clerks, and merchants who obsessively observe nearby beaches and cautiously (yet excitedly) examine the contents of wrecked vessels. Washed ashore, such fruits of maritime disaster delineate medieval English conceptions of seashores as dangerous yet profitable spaces, wherein seaside harvests of (un)natural resources help to stimulate local economic networks. Designations of these shipwrecks as “magical” or “fortuitous” cannot, however, completely elide the source of such wealth in others’ suffering—an unavoidable implication that interrogates contemporary means of attaining investment capital. As such, this paper examines how the littoral space of the seashore is cast as a source of perilous and problematic material bounty in many Middle English romances.
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