L’insularité : du mythe à la réalité

Abstract

Since the beginning of Time, the island has revealed itself as a protective and dangerous space, at the same time the scene of fabulous adventures, an "huis clos" or a springboard to the exotic imagination. Let’s just think of the odyssey of the cunning Ulysses or Gulliver’s adventures among the Lilliputitians, Crusoe’s condemnation to twenty-eight years of solitude and Suzanne’s experience in a Pacific island. Together with L’île des Esclaves by Marivaux and the Giraudoucian Suzanne et le Pacifique, two novels that start with a shipwreck, Enrique Vila-Matas, a real life castaway, does not hesitate in paying hommage to the archipelago of The Azores and the Madeira Island. He sets off, through his double Mayol, at the discovery of his own self, trying to rebuild his threatened identity.

Keywords

• satire
• island
• shipwreck
• imagination
• parody