ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the place of shipwreck in early modern history and culture will structure its some major examples by bringing accounts of early modern shipwrecks into dialogue with familiar narrative models from the classical and biblical traditions that provide early modern intellectual context for narratives of disasters at sea. It considers how classical, humanist, and Christian topoi operate in accounts of some significant historical shipwrecks, each of which generated multiple literary responses. Shipwreck tells a story of disaster and loss, and, in some fortunate cases, also a tale of redemption or even salvation. Josiah Blackmore, whose work on Portuguese shipwreck narratives has been foundational for early modern shipwreck studies, emphasizes the way shipwreck builds symbolic structures from failed voyages: ‘Out of shipwreck, the poet tells us, come texts. Representations of shipwreck also appeared widely in early modern emblems, paintings, and decorative culture.
