Insular Arcadias: Islands in the Great War Fiction of J.-M.G. Le Clézio and Pat Barker
Insular Arcadias: Islands in the Great War Fiction of J.-M.G. Le Clézio and Pat Barker

Summary/Abstract: The aim of my article is to explore the representation of the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues in “The Prospector” (1985) by French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio and of the Solomon Islands in the “Regeneration” trilogy (1991—1995) by a British writer Pat Barker. Both Le Clézio and Barker use and challenge the pastoral recourses belonging to the tradition of Great War writing and the convention of idealising remote Arcadian lands. Several insular myths are thus undermined by the two writers, who thus resituate remote islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as integral parts of European modernity.

• Details
• Contents