Human Nature at Sea

Abstract

Nineteenth-century Americans and Europeans envisaged the ocean as a sublime space, at once frightening and inviting. Romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley celebrated the sea as a seductive substance with which we humans might seek to merge, dissolving our bodies into the nourishing matrix of life itself. A kindred vision persists today, underwriting ecologically minded suggestions that we human beings tune more deeply into our environmentally embattled Earth. According to such views, humans might amplify our ecological consciousness by recognizing that an oceanic past swims through our most intimate substances: our blood, sweat, and tears.