Insularité et connaissance dans Hayy ibn Yaqzân d’Ibn Tufayl

Abstract

Hayy Ibn Yaqzân, a philosophical novel from Andalucia by Ibn Tufayl and inspired by Avicenna, tells the story of a self-taught and knowledge-seeking character born on the mythical island of Wak-Wak. Immersed in nature, he manages to detach himself from the contingent and reaches a form of spirituality liberated from external constraints, allowing him to contemplate his relationship with the word, with others and with himself. This “Robinsonade” explores the same themes that will be found later in subsequent texts, such as solitude, whose spatial counterpart is the cave, a place of revelation and rebirth, which leads to the reflection that a semiotics of the island, understood as a place of seclusion, does not correspond to a single pattern.

Keywords

• Wak-Wak
• Andalusia
• insularity
• One thousand and one nights
• knowledge