ABSTRACT
The earliest known literary depiction of shipwreck is found in a papyrus dating from the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: it tells of a shipwrecked sailor who is washed up on a magical island ruled by a benevolent giant serpent. The first visual depictions of shipwreck date from antiquity, with Greek wine jars from the eighth century BCE showing scenes of overturned ships and drowning men which may represent Odysseuss shipwreck. In both literature and art, these are just the earliest surviving examples of what were almost certainly much older literary and artistic traditions. Shipwreck in art and literature demonstrates the rich imaginative potential of the shipwreck topos, tracing its development over almost two millennia and investigating its various inflections and valences in differing times and places. With the transoceanic turn of the fifteenth century, and thereafter the transition into early modernity, the shipwreck theme became far more pronounced in western art and literature.
