Abstract:
This issue of English Academy Review provides both contributors and readers of our internationally acclaimed journal with a rare opportunity to imagine themselves as novice deep-sea divers, not in search of a Tennysonian Leviathan but rather plunging into the depths to view the wonders of one of the world’s surviving coral reefs, a metaphor for the contents of this issue. As we view Nature’s bounty beneath the ocean, we may not be able to identify all the wondrous types of fish, sponges, anemones, plankton, octopi, starfish and other sea creatures, or the seaweed, ferns, rocks, barnacles and carnivorous plant life beneath the seas. In like manner, we may not be familiar with the wide variety of texts explored and interrogated here or the scholarly readings thereof, yet we will still be able to enjoy them and to be intrigued by dipping into them.