Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-298) and index.

Preliminary material -- 1 Transformative Shores – An Introduction -- 2 Ambiguity -- 3 Liminality -- 4 Transgression -- 5 Conclusion: Epistemic Anxieties -- 6 Works Cited -- Index -- Appeared earlier in the SPATIAL PRACTICES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SERIES IN CULTURAL HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE.

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The shore defies definition. The shore deconstructs and rebuilds, is the beginning or end of a journey, initiates or stops mobility. Here survivors of shipwrecks, like Robinson Crusoe, escape their death; and the weary and tired, like Max Morden, wade back into the womb of nature. The shore is transformation spatialized. Still the coast as literary setting is more than a decorative space. Its utopian/dystopian nature, its liminality and ambiguity invite transgressions of various kinds, which undermine any notion of stable and fixed borders and boundaries. The littoral is liminal, a third space that contests and deconstructs epistemic certainties. This study illustrates this paradigmatic nature of shorelines from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest to John Banville’s The Sea .