That voyage narratives reflect a symbiosis between literature and history, imagination and experience, and fiction and autobiography is the premise of The Sea Voyage Narrative, written by Robert Foulke, a gifted scholar who brings decades of seafaring experience to his study of the genre. In clear and compact fashion, Foulke defines this old and powerful form of literature, examines its underlying structure and substance, and distills its complex history.

In an instructive overview, Foulke traces the ways in which human attitudes toward the sea have shaped the sea voyage narrative over time; analyzes common psychological elements, such as the sea's effect on one's sense of time, space, and motion; surveys archetypal patterns and themes, among them exploration, discovery, return, initiation, and immobilization; and inspects recurrent nautical character types, including the rogue, the jolly tar, the stowaway, the greenhorn, and the malingerer.