Introduction: Shipwrecks and Islands as Multilayered, Timeless Metaphors of Human Existence

Abstract

As with holidaymakers, islands remain an enticing destination for writers and artists. However, in contrast to holidaymakers (at least most holidaymakers), fictional characters tend to end up on islands for different reasons, essentially variations on voluntary and involuntary isolation. Either they seek a retreat from civilization or they will do all in their power to regain their familiar social and cultural identities. In each case, shipwrecks may be at the heart of reasons for departure and/or arrival, with either the escape from actual wreckage due to bad seas, or a metaphorical near-drowning experience (personal, material or existential) at their core. The shipwreck, as an image and symbol, is intimately connected to the symbolic potential of the ship and of life as a ship voyage. The most established types of symbolic ships in European literature are the ships of life, logos, political community, humanity, as well as the ship of the soul, the ship as the symbol of civilization or of intellectual endeavour, the frigate as woman, the ship of fools, and the drunken ship.1Intimately associated with ships and shipwrecks, and similarly to them, islands occupy a significant space in fiction, art, music and film. They can represent scenic locations (more often than not deceptively enchanting) but, particularly when associated with shipwreck imagery, they are essentially literary devices that shape narratives. Imaginary islands exist as temporary paradises where contemplation and selfreinvention may happen, or as false havens where conventional laws and moral codes are put to the test - as in Golding's The Lord of the Flies, Shakespeare's The Tempest and its rewriting Une tempete by Aime Cesaire, Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, or Michel Tournier's Vendredi, ou les limbes du Pacifique.Storms on Islands: Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts presents interdisciplinary essays bringing together, among other fields, literature, philosophy, art history, film, gender, and music, thus producing fresh and complementary insights and perspectives into motifs which can be found in world literature since ancient times. The shipwreck and island motifs are indeed atemporal and universal, and naturally lend themselves to a comparative outlook. The protagonist, either shipwrecked or about to become so metaphorically, arrives in a space, either empty or inhabited, and has to revisit her/his sense of self in relation to the new environment and possibly to others on the island. This premise invites multiple critical approaches, from the classical to the postmodern, in the analysis of a wide variety of texts, through the lenses of feminist, identity, spatial and postcolonial theories, amongst many.The artistic fascination that shipwrecks and islands inspire has been matched by scholarly research, although generally treating the two themes separately. Recently, several academic publications have appeared: A Sea of Misadventures: Shipwreck and Survival in Early America - in Maritime History, by Amy Mitchell-Cook (University of South Carolina Press, 2014), Shipwreck in Art and Literature: Images and Interpretations from Antiquity to the Present Day, edited by Carl Thompson (Routledge), and Ainsi Soit-Ile: Litterature et anthropologie dans les contes des mers du sud de Robert Louis Stevenson, by Sylvie Largeaud-Ortega (Honore Champion), both in 2013; The Shipwrecked Sailor in Arabic and Western literature: Ibn Tufayl and his Influence on European literature, by Mahmud Baroud (Macmillan) and Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth, by Katherine Frank (Pegasus), both in 2012; and Seaing through the Past: Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction by Joanna Rostek, and Islanded Identities: Constructions of Postcolonial Cultural Insularity, edited by Maeve McCusker and Anthony Soares, both published by Rodopi in 2011, significantly in two different collections, respectively in Postmodern Studies and in Cross/Cultures - Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English. …