Tide Turning Literary Imaginations of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta and the Humber Estuary Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München vorgelegt von Eveline Renée de Smalen aus Vlaardingen, Niederlande 2020 2 Referent: Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch Koreferrent: Dr. David Higgins Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 12.07.2019 3 Tide Turning: Literary Imaginations of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta and the Humber Estuary Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München vorgelegt von Eveline R. de Smalen 4 The North Sea with the Humber Estuary and Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta © OpenStreetMap contributors 5 The Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta in the Netherlands © OpenStreetMap contributors The Humber Estuary in England © OpenStreetMap contributors 6 Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 10 Dutch Nature ............................................................................................................................................. 13 English Nature .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Nature in the Anthropocene ................................................................................................................ 26 River Mouths Speaking .......................................................................................................................... 38 “The Tide Had Turned”: Remembering and Reimaging the River ............................................ 47 A Theatre in the Port .............................................................................................................................. 51 A Vibrant Nature ...................................................................................................................................... 60 Paradise Lost ............................................................................................................................................. 66 Paradise Regained? ................................................................................................................................. 72 “This Kingdom of Metaphor”: Imagination and Materiality in the Construction of Place80 Empty Lands and Open Skies .............................................................................................................. 84 Poetry and Politics .................................................................................................................................. 92 Poem and Place ...................................................................................................................................... 100 Materiality and Degradation ............................................................................................................ 107 Spectres of Landscape ........................................................................................................................ 120 Estuarial Poetry ..................................................................................................................................... 125 Places of Empathy ................................................................................................................................ 133 “And What Is Real?”: Landscaping in the Anthropocene ........................................................... 143 Creating a Garden ................................................................................................................................. 147 Hortus Conclusus .................................................................................................................................. 155 The Urban Sublime ............................................................................................................................... 162 Dreams and Reality .............................................................................................................................. 168 “The Wind that Shapes Spurn, Shapes All of Us”: The Perennial Transformations of Spurn .............................................................................................................................................................. 179 Shifting Lands ......................................................................................................................................... 183 Tide and Time ........................................................................................................................................ 189 Landscape and Memory ..................................................................................................................... 197 Boundaries and Transformations .................................................................................................. 204 “The Things that are to Come”: Ways to a New Nature .............................................................. 211 The Park on the Motorway ............................................................................................................... 215 Landscape and Text ............................................................................................................................. 223 Tradition and Modernity ................................................................................................................... 236 7 Frames and Layers ............................................................................................................................... 246 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................... 257 Summary in English ................................................................................................................................. 268 Summary in German ................................................................................................................................ 274 Maps ............................................................................................................................................................... 281 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................. 284 8 Acknowledgements This doctoral thesis has one name on the cover but, like any other thesis, it could not have been written without the help and support of many other people. Firstly, I owe many, many thanks to Christof Mauch and David Higgins, my two supervisors, for their guidance, encouragement and criticism. I could not have finished this project without them. Thank you also to the ENHANCE ITN and all its members for giving me the opportunity to embark on a PhD project, and for creating the supportive environment that allowed me to finish it. Thank you all my different office mates over the years for your company, and especially Anna Antonova, Kiley Kost and Eline Tabak, for your helpful suggestions. Thanks to the participants of Christof Mauch’s half-yearly Oberseminar at Schönwag for their constructive criticism of drafts of some of the chapters of this thesis. Thank you in particular to Katie Ritson, for your verbal and non-verbal communication during these sessions, and thank you also for all the knowledge and experience you’ve shared over the years. Thank you to Arielle Helmick, Carmen Dines and Lena Engel for not shouting at me for my messy travel applications. Thank you to Greg Bankoff and Robb Robinson for essential guidance on the history of Hull and the Humber in the earliest stage of this project. Thank you to the people in the United Kingdom who made my research stay at the University of Leeds as productive and pleasing as it was. Firstly, thank you to all staff and volunteers, especially Jennifer Few and Michael Rogers, at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Potteric Carr, where I was lucky enough to be able to do a secondment. Thank you to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust staff at Spurn, who kindly explained some part of the conflict around the site’s management from their point of view, took me for a much appreciated short birdwatching trip and gave me an even more appreciated ride to Easington. Thank you to the two women at the Sunk Island Heritage Centre, whose names I do not know, who kindly let me have a look inside the church despite the fact that it was not officially open. Thank you to the public transportation system in the United Kingdom for bringing me to and from my many research sites. Thank you also to 9 David Pascoe, for believing in me before this project even started. Finally, thank you to all my friends, for encouraging and believing in me, and not being upset when I have been unresponsive. Thank you especially to Esther van der Waal, who read one of the chapters in this thesis in its very first stage. A massive thank you, thank you, thank you, to my partner Douglas Bell, who generously helped me in editing the first draft of this thesis and who supported me even when I was at my worst. Finally, thank you to my sisters, Laura and Iris, for being the best two people anybody could grow up with, and thank