Theorising Literary Islands

Ian Kinane is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Roehampton, where he teaches popular genre fiction, postcolonial literatures, and children's literature. He is the editor of Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade: New Paradigms for Young Readers (Liverpool University Press 2018) and Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Ian is currently writing a monograph on British-Jamaica cultural relations in Ian Fleming's Jamaica-set James Bond novels, and he is the editor of the peer-review, open-access International Journal of James Bond Studies.

• Acknowledgments/ Introduction: “Which Came First, the Island Books, or Islomania?” / 1. Re-Reading Robinsonade Literature / 2. Geo-Imaginary Islands / 3. Islands: Topographies of Self / 4. Islands of Paradise? / 5. Remediating Islands: From Page to Screen / 6. Islands in Mediation / Afterword: Islands on the Horizon / Bibliography / Filmography / Index

The book offers a reflection on the culturally constructed trope of the island and its evolution from the colonial context of the eighteenth century to contemporary Western culture. Indeed, the desert island is a favourite topos of popular culture, as can be seen in the abundance of island narratives across diverse media. Kinane describes the trope of the island as an “overdetermined metaphor.” He explores a vast corpus of popular texts, films, and television shows in this ambitious study, including fictions by Stacpoole, Lawrence, Golding, Tournier, Sage, Garland, and Martel; films such as Mutiny on the Bounty; series including Gilligan’s Island, Fantasy Island, and Lost; and even reality shows like Survivor.