Description
Book SynopsisThe motifs of island and shipwreck have been present in literature and the arts from ancient times. Whether they occur as plot elements, as part of literary or film imagery, as symbols in paintings, as leitmotifs in songs, or as concepts in philosophical theories, both have always been a source of fascination to authors, artists and scholars. In Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts, Brigitte Le Juez and Olga Springer have gathered essays that explore shipwreck and island figures in texts as historically, culturally and artistically diverse as Walter Scott’s The Lord of the Isles, Cristina Fernández Cubas’ “The Lighthouse”, reality TV series Treasure Island, pop songs of the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs, or The Otolith Group’s essay-film Hydra Decapita.
Table of ContentsCONTENTS Acknowledgements Epigraph Brigitte Le Juez and Olga Springer Introduction: Shipwrecks and Islands as Multilayered, Timeless Metaphors of Human Existence I: Shipwrecks, Islands and Subjectivity Volkmar Billig “I-lands”: The Construction and Shipwreck of an Insular Subject in Modern Discourse Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton, Gerald Naughton, and Samiah Haque The Island as Chora Phillip Stevenson “Mine Was a Peculiar Kind of Wreck”: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Deconstruction of Treasure Island in The Wrecker Michael Hinds Robinson in Headphones: The Desert Island as Pop Fetish II: The Island as Aesthetic Concept Heather H. Yeung Adventures in Form: The Hebrides and the Romantic Imaginary Patricia García “The Lighthouse” (Edgar Allan Poe, 1849; Cristina Fernández Cubas, 1997): From the “Egocentred” to a “Geocentred” Analysis David Garrett Izzo Fifty Years On: Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962) Reconsidered III: Weathering the Tempest – Images of Shipwrecks and Islands from Ancient to Modern Times Barbara Freitag The Gaelicization of Brasil Island: From Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium Robert J. Vrtis The Tempest Toss’d Ship: Twelfth Night and Emotional Communities in Early Modern London Dyani Johns Taff A Shipwreck of Faith: Hazardous Voyages and Contested Representations in Milton’s Samson Agonistes Barra Ó Seaghdha Islands and Irelands: Journeys, Mappings and Re-Mappings IV: The Island as Feminine Space Sara K. Day “Maybe Girls Need an Island”: Desert Islands and Gender Troubles in Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens Amy Hicks Recreating Home for the New Girl: Domesticity and Adventure in L.T. Meade’s Four on an Island Shawn Thomson Lady Castaways in the Gilded Age in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth Sandra Vlasta Islands to Get Away From: Postcolonial Islands and Emancipation in Novels by Monica Ali, Andrea Levy and Caryl Phillips V: Experimental Shipwrecks and Island as Laboratory Shiela Pardee Drifting and Foundering: Evolutionary Theory in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos Maria Błaszkiewicz “You Turn Worlds Upside Down”: The Politics of Reversal in Terry Pratchett’s Nation Pat Brereton Shipwrecks and Desert Islands: Ecology and Nature – A Case Study of How Reality TV and Fictional Films Frame Representations of Islands Beatrice Ferrara The Figuration of the Shipwreck as Political Commentary in Hydra Decapita, an Essay-Film by The Otolith Group Notes on Contributors Bibliography Index
