NEPTUNE AND THE SEA: MYTHICAL MARITIME SPACE IN SHAKESPEARE’S AND WILKINS’ PERICLES
NEPTUNE AND THE SEA: MYTHICAL MARITIME SPACE IN SHAKESPEARE’S AND WILKINS’ PERICLES

Summary/Abstract: This essay examines the sea in Shakespeare’s and Wilkins’ “Pericles” as a mythical and spatial construct, foregrounding Neptune’s presence as a symbolic mediator between human experience and cosmic order. The maritime world of the play is not simply a stage for adventure but a heterotopic space where boundaries collapse: between safety and peril, exile and return, mortality and renewal. Drawing on spatial theory, particularly Foucault’s notion of heterotopia and Yi-Fu Tuan’s insights into place and space, the analysis situates the sea as a dynamic site of transformation. The play’s maritime landscapes are read as liminal thresholds, where myth and narrative converge to stage encounters with Neptune’s domain. The sea embodies both chaos and possibility, functioning as a liminal threshold through which characters encounter divine will, chance, and the reconstitution of identity. Neptune’s mythical resonance amplifies this spatial ambiguity, casting the Mediterranean Sea as a palimpsest layered with classical myth, Christian symbolism and early modern anxieties about navigation and commerce. Ultimately, the essay argues that Pericles dramatizes the sea as a mythical space where human vulnerability is reframed within a larger cosmological order, positioning maritime space as central to the play’s negotiation of fate and transcendence.

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