Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea

When the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surro...

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Main Author: Pierre Vitoux
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2008-11-01
Series:Études Britanniques Contemporaines
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/7225
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spelling doaj-41ba8f3813914b7f9b6bbd7ea0bcfe022020-11-25T02:11:05ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeÉtudes Britanniques Contemporaines1168-49172271-54442008-11-013410.4000/ebc.7225Ghosts in John Banville’s The SeaPierre VitouxWhen the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surrounding the new world he had discovered in his innocence. But the reader finds itertextual clues in the text to solve the apparent paradox. They refer him to Freud’s description of the unending struggle of the ego to maintain a coherent personality, and also to his early speculations in his essay ‘The ‘Uncanny’ ‘ about what he will call the death instinct. That instinct is intertextually related in the novel to the ‘high instincts’, the ‘intimations of immortality’ of Wordsworth’s Ode, but as their obverse, so that the myth of the birth out of the sea is here steeped in the mood of serene disenchantment characteristic of the ironic mode of post-Romantic fiction.http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/7225
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Pierre Vitoux
spellingShingle Pierre Vitoux
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
Études Britanniques Contemporaines
author_facet Pierre Vitoux
author_sort Pierre Vitoux
title Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
title_short Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
title_full Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
title_fullStr Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
title_full_unstemmed Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
title_sort ghosts in john banville’s the sea
publisher Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
series Études Britanniques Contemporaines
issn 1168-4917
2271-5444
publishDate 2008-11-01
description When the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surrounding the new world he had discovered in his innocence. But the reader finds itertextual clues in the text to solve the apparent paradox. They refer him to Freud’s description of the unending struggle of the ego to maintain a coherent personality, and also to his early speculations in his essay ‘The ‘Uncanny’ ‘ about what he will call the death instinct. That instinct is intertextually related in the novel to the ‘high instincts’, the ‘intimations of immortality’ of Wordsworth’s Ode, but as their obverse, so that the myth of the birth out of the sea is here steeped in the mood of serene disenchantment characteristic of the ironic mode of post-Romantic fiction.
url http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/7225
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