Utopian Passport Control

Abstract

The argument presented in this article addresses a conflict that is fundamental to the eighteenth‐century transformation of the novel namely that between the mobility restrictions imposed by the modern state and the novel's traditional dependency on the free mobility of its characters. J. G. Schnabel's Insel Felsenburg is a striking literary manifestation of this conflict. As I argue, the narrative logic of this voluminous and somewhat bizarre novel can only be fully appreciated when taking into account its complex negotiations of mobility and movement control. Marking the confluence of two novelistic traditions, the utopian novel and the adventure novel, it is equally reliant on the settledness and the nomadism of its central characters, the former being the precondition for social order, the latter the basis for the novel's narrative momentum. The structure of the novel results from an attempt to resolve this conflict by channelling mobility into politically and morally acceptable paths – that is, by inventing a literary movement control regime.