Abstract
This article explores the way in which at the fin de siècle, Doyle, Stevenson and Wells chose to set their works on marginal islands in order to spatially escape not only from the bleak reality of the modern world, but also from the constraints of realism, and to reconnect with more imaginative forms of writing. It thus aims to shed new light on the relationship between geographical space and literary aesthetics, and to demonstrate that the island space is especially conducive to generic excursions out of realism and towards the fantastic, the marvellous and even the monstrous, leading to the creation of eminently hybrid literary texts.
Highlights
Julie Gay Beyond the Boundaries of RealismIslands are deeply embedded in the European literary imagination and their separate, isolated nature appears to be conducive to the occurrence of marvellous or preternatural phenomena, making them a favoured setting for storytellers
I aim to shed new light on the relationship between geographical space and literary aesthetics at the turn of the twentieth century, by demonstrating that the protean island space allowed some major fin de siècle authors to explore the boundaries of realism through various forms of generic excursions into the fantastic, the marvellous, and even the monstrous
Remote nature, the island appears as the ideal place for the irruption of the marvellous within a seemingly realistic universe, serving for a range of fin de siècle writers as a reservoir for mysterious monsters and strange creatures
Summary
Islands are deeply embedded in the European literary imagination and their separate, isolated nature appears to be conducive to the occurrence of marvellous or preternatural phenomena, making them a favoured setting for storytellers This ‘magical’ and mythical potential has been exploited time and again since as far back as the foundational myth of the Odyssey and Odysseus’ wonderful encounters with a colourful bestiary of hybrid and monstrous creatures across the Mediterranean archipelago. The desert island is somewhat paradoxically, one of the several possible birthplaces of the realist novel, with the publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719 (Watt 1984, 13) Such aesthetic plasticity might explain why by the turn of the 20th century, as the realist novel had reached its cultural peak, a number of authors decided to explore the topos of the ‘desert’ island anew and repeople it with some of its original monsters, in an attempt to negotiate their ambivalence towards the dominant realist model. This will lead me to highlight the way the island’s protean nature fosters hybridity at the diegetic and at the textual level, as the island becomes a laboratory for the hybridisation of spatial, physical, as well as literary forms
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