For my final essay, I plan to expand my Discovery 1 about The Romance of the Faery Melusine by Andre Lebey. In my first essay, I focused on how the story reveals humanity’s fear of nature and the desire to control what cannot be fully understood. For my final project, I will develop this idea further by connecting it with Helen Rozwadowski’s Vast Expanses: Introduction: People and Oceans. Using Rozwadowski’s discussion of how humans turn the ocean into a concept shaped by knowledge and power, I will explore how Lebey’s portrayal of Melusine reflects the same human impulse to dominate and define the natural world. My essay will analyze how both texts show that human curiosity often becomes a form of control, turning nature, from the sea to the supernatural, into something that must be explained, contained, or destroyed.
Mermaids: Literature & the Environment
ECL 305. Fall 2025. Professor Pressman
Good ideas here. I think your primary claim is here: “both texts show that human curiosity often becomes a form of control, turning nature, from the sea to the supernatural, into something that must be explained, contained, or destroyed.” But, how and where/when does that shift happen? You write, “how humans turn the ocean into a concept shaped by knowledge and power”; what prompts the turn? “I will explore how Lebey’s portrayal of Melusine reflects the same human impulse to dominate and define the natural world”; does this presume that all humans have the same impulse? In other words, I’d like to see you focus on what the texts tell us about the human impulse… or, perhaps change the focus of your argument?