The Island in Imagination and Experience

Barry Smith

• Publisher: Saraband
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781910192795
• eBook ISBN: 9781910192801
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Écosystèmes et Habitats

From Treasure Island to Robben Island, from the paradise of Thomas More's Utopia to Napoleon's purgatory on Elba, islands have proved irresistible to mankind's imagination since time immemorial.

Self-confessed islomaniac Barry Smith explores how islands bewitch us so, and examines the kind of human experiences that islands inspire. Journeying all around the globe to take in the most fascinating stories of Earth's half a million islands, this book considers the unique geography, politics and economics of islands and their cultures.

It traces their singular place in literature, religion and philosophy, and disentangles the myths and the facts to reveal just why islands exert such an insistent grip on the human psyche.

References

Chapter One

I am particularly indebted to Geoffrey Ashe’s Land to the West (1962) for revealing the significance of Saint Brendan’s Navigatio and for his interpretation of the early Irish explorations into the western Atlantic. For island themes in imaginative literature, and for the island stories in Gulliver’s Travels, I have followed the lead of Manguel and Guadalupi in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980) and J.S. Bowman in A Book of Islands (1971). Henry Stommel’s Lost Islands: The Story of Islands that have Vanished from Nautical Charts (1984) is a fascinating account of imaginary islands discovered, undiscovered, rediscovered and eliminated. D.S. Johnson’s Phantom Islands of the Atlantic (1994) introduced me to seven charted islands that never were.

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Cook, S. (1998, October 24). Drops in the ocean. The Guardian, pp.10–11.

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4. Rockall

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St. Kilda

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North Rona

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The Shiant Islands

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Nam

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Easter Island

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Bouvet Island

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11. Ashe (1962).

12. Cited in Firestone, C.B. (1924, p.270). The Coasts of Illusion: A Study of Travel Tales. New York: Harper.

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16. Manguel & Guadalupi (1980).

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19. Ashe (1962).

Babcock (1992).

Higginson (1898).

Johnson (1994).

Morison, S.E. (1971). The European Discovery of America; The Northern Voyages AD 500–1600. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Lost in Space, Lost in Time
• Crusoe: Castaways, Maroons and Beachcombers
• A Fragile Geography
• The Economics of Vulnerability
• Political Dependence and Turbulence
• No Value But That of Location
• Paradise and Purgatory
• An Island Mentality
• A Stranger on the Shore
• Island Tales
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• References