From Islands to Portraits: Four Literary VariationsThroughout the long course of literature, islands have accumulated uncanny connotations of death, together with peculiarities of linguistic definition and expression. Since the age of discovery, after the Caribbean Islands, America itself, and later the archipelagos and atolls in the Pacific became known to travellers and conquistadores, islands have been sought, searched, explored and physically possessed as women; cultural recognition takes the form of sexual and physical possession (Venus was born from the sea, and is identified with an island). These are the themes of the first two variations discussed in this book. |
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Airoli ambivalence America animated appears Aran Islands artist Beatrice Cenci beauty body century chair-portrait chapter character connotations Crane Crusoe cryptograms Daniel Deronda dark dead death by water Derek Walcott desert desolation discoveries drowned Ellesmere elusive embrace enchanted experience explored expression eyes face fear figure final fire flame geografictione Gray haunted Hawthorne Henry Henry James human immrama inner island isle John John Everett Millais killing portrait land landscape language linguistic living look Maggie Maggie's magic marvellous Melville Melville's metaphor motif Mouchette mysterious Nathaniel Hawthorne nature never nineteenth-century fiction novel original painter painting Paradise physical picture Pierre Pocahontas poem portrait becomes possession protagonist psychological purely reveal Robinson scene seems seen sense sensual sexual sitter soul Stephen Crane story strange T.S. Eliot tale telltale portraits turn uncanny virtual reality voice Voyage W.H. Auden Walcott William Strachey woman women writes