The Novel and the Sea by Margaret Cohen (review)

Abstract

COHEN, MARGARET. The and Sea. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.328 pp. $24.95 paper, $52.50 cloth. I expected to find The and a new angle from which to view development of European novel, one that broadens field of inquiry and adds yet another sub-history to History of Novel canon. Instead, Margaret Cohen's fascinating changes playing field altogether: it persuasively elucidates entirely new criteria by which we can understand early European and American novels and their development across both time and space. Like practice of that Cohen outlines her first chapter, her argument is executed with deftness, skill, and compleat (37). Cohen's main aim this text is to show maritime ethics--and specifically, practice of craft--are adopted and repurposed early British, French, and American fiction. Cohen's focus on poetics of forces us to reconsider many of long-held beliefs about novel. Indeed, Sea adventure depicts action rather than psychology, its organization is episodic, and it measures plausibility by performance rather than mimesis. The heroism of skilled work substitutes for education and love (11). In Cohen's purview, even virtue--that hallmark of domestic novel--becomes less important than mariner's which encourages heroic performance dangerous zones, often at edges of existing knowledge and (12). As Cohen suggests, we might see all novels operating according to adventure poetics, particularly those that feature characters on margins of society (perhaps even Pamela and Evelina are adventure novels that test their heroines' mastery of a kind of feminine practical reason 1131). Cohen also suggests that itself develops a way parallel to adventure fiction its dedication to exploring edge zones and its centrifugal travels across time and space. The upshot to all this is breathtaking: Cohen invites us to revise dominant narrative about rise of novel not just by making a place for adventure fiction, but also by reconsidering our long-standing prejudice that those processes and events defining modern occur on land (l 3). As Cohen sees it, modernity of seafaring has been obscured from view, when fact maritime activity was central to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and central to literature of this period. Cohen commences The and by outlining practice of craft, largely through a close reading of James Cook's first journal, which narrates navigator's harrowing encounter with still uncharted Great Barrier Reef. Focusing on Cook's description of practices that saved his ship and crew, Cohen disentangles elements that make up craft--e.g., prudence, protocol, endeavor, resolution, creative problem solving, and compleat knowledge. Importantly, Cohen also links mariner's to style that came to define travel writing of early eighteenth century. Thus, it is mariner's craft--rather than New Science--that gave rise to popularity of plain style, as well as its promise of authenticity. Cohen's exposition of this chapter also allows her to demonstrate one of her recurrent points: despite scholady debates about the novel's seeming lack of interest work, as Cohen sees it, Work does appear guise of craft (12). Though Cohen begins her study with a familiar text--Robinson Crusoe--she reinterprets Crusoe's character by explaining how Defoe wrought his new poetics of adventure from mariner's ethos of craft (60), which he released in competition with success of maritime book (7). Throughout this chapter, Cohen demonstrates exactly Defoe altered maritime tropes to make them more appealing to readers, part by reading Crusoe side-by-side with William Dampier's nonfictional travelogue. …