Atributos y funciones del mar en el viaje literario medieval. Algunos ejemplos de la narrativa francesa (siglos XII y XIII)

Abstract

This work focuses on the narrative and symbolic functions of seascapes in medieval French narrative genres. Literary texts echo the medieval spatial conception of the universe: the sea as boundary and separation, as extension, as displacement; in short, a horizontal surfacesea over which the protagonists of the stories wonder freely, and one that is also morally assimilated to life itself, to the very human existence. Although at the beginning the sea and its symbols are not that significant in literature, from the twelfth century onwards the Celtic traditions brings about a new perception of the sea, conceived both as a horizontal and a vertical space. The vertical gaze and the background sight turn this space into one of transformation, the threshold to a different kind of world and knowledge. This volume-sea will be the location of initiation adventures whereby protagonists will prove helpless before the power dragging them to their destiny.