When the "unsinkable" sank in 1912, a cultural phenomenon was born that has captivated the world ever since.
In The Titanic Complex: A Cultural Manifest, English Prof. John Wilson Foster uses the idea of a ship's manifest to survey the folklore, art, drama, songs and poems inspired by the disaster. He also looks at how the construction and loss of the ship fits into the industrial and socio-political culture of east Belfast.
"This ship began its career as a symbol of modernity and of industrial supremacy," says Foster. "It continues as a symbol of post-modernism."
Foster, whose specialty is modern British literature, identifies how writers such as Virginia Woolf, G.B. Shaw and Thomas Hardy responded to the tragedy in their work. The authors often used the sinking of the ship as an allegory for the social inequality of the times or a warning against pride in conquering nature through technology.
Foster also examines recent literary responses to the tragedy, many of which were published following the 1985 discovery of the wreck.
The second part of the book focuses on Belfast, birthplace of the Titanic and Foster's home town.
"Growing up in Belfast within sight of the Harland and Wolff shipyard, the Titanic had always been there for me in local legend," says Foster.
Work on the liner started in 1909. When the ship was launched in 1911 the debate over Irish independence, or Home Rule, was at its height. Most of the Titanic's shipwrights were Protestants opposed to Home Rule.
"The Titanic became a badge of pride for Protestant Unionists, eager to show the rest of Ireland and the world what they could achieve," says Foster. "When the ship sank, many in Ireland said it deserved to go down because it was a product of bigotry and arrogance."
Foster warns against becoming caught up in the Titanic's significance as a cultural icon without recalling its enormous human tragedy. Using the words of E. M. Forster, he urges the reader to "remember the submerged."