Le livre des iles: Atlas at recits insulaires de la Genese a Jules Verne.

Frank Lestringant. Le livre des iles: Atlas at recits insulaires de la Genese a Jules Verne.

Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 2002. Pbk. 430 pp. index. illus. bibl. [euro] 62. ISBN: 2-600-00682-6.

This book might more accurately have been titled "The Island Encyclopedia." The result of over twenty years' work and reflection on the subject (382), it discusses real and fictional islands in many centuries and many countries; the index of primary sources lists over a hundred authors. An insulaire (a recent French noun not yet in the dictionary) is an atlas of islands, and "insular narrative" covers a multiplicity of genres, as we shall see.

The book is divided into four roughly chronological "Archipels," each with three chapters. The first discusses the concept of islands as fragments left after the Deluge, different possible functions of islands, and "les temps des iles" as periods of crisis and change (chap. 1); the Aegean Sea as origin of many later ideas about islands, the legendary "Caloyers," Dante and several later writers and artists (chap. 2); and Venice and three island cities she influenced, in Venezuela, Mexico and China (chap. 3). The second Archipel concentrates on actual accounts of New World exploration, by Andre Thevet (chaps. 4-5) and explorers of Florida, "the island Eden" (chap. 6). The numerous illustrations are remarkably clear and helpful.

In the third Archipel we learn about insular fiction from Ulysses to the late sixteenth century: Homer, Lucian, St. Brandan and the Disciple de Pantagruel (chap. 7); Rabelais, on whom Professor Lestringant is an acknowledged authority (chap. 8); Beroalde de Verville and some Reformation and Counter-Reformation propaganda, including a stunning map of Rome inside the devil's mouth (chap. 9).

We then move on to the seventeenth century (chap. 10), with a dense and fascinating presentation of French "islands of love," which could be amusing (La Carte de Tendre) or satirical (La Carte du Royaume de Coquetterie). The end of the chapter mentions more briefly Joseph Hall and a few other writers including Fenelon and Morelly.

The last two chapters sometimes seem a little perfunctory, though their material is always interesting and was often new to me. In the eighteenth century (chap. 11), claims Lestringant, the "insulaire" becomes a laboratory in which to examine society. This applies both to factual explorations, like Pitton de Tournefort's Relation d'un voyage du Levant of 1717 with its account of botanical discoveries, and to the satire of Swift, Voltaire, and Sade. The last chapter deals with three nineteenth-century authors: Melville, Hugo, and Verne.

This dry summary cannot begin to convey the richness and complexity of thought in this book. Lestringant's islands are sometimes real islands, whose physical features and shape (Venice is shaped like a turbot, 102), population, flora and fauna are minutely described. Sometimes they are fictional islands, presented as utopias or dystopias, places of exile or refuge, mirrors of society or propaganda weapons. He has read, apparently, everything relevant to Renaissance navigational resources, the history of Florida's Fort Carolina, the principles of eighteenth-century botany, and much, much more. He relates the Renaissance fascination with islands to the period's love of "morcellement" and "bigarrure," and in every period can confront the major writers we know well with lesser-known figures (have you ever heard of George Psalmanazaar?). All travel narratives, he claims, are a combination of adventure and inventory (this sounds better in French), whether the travel is fundamentally "itinerance" (wandering) or "peregrination" (quest).

Lestringant is also a man of strong opinions, which he does not hesitate to express in passing; he disapproves of Duval's analysis of Rabelais's Fourth Book (257), and rejects the attribution of the Fifth Book to Rabelais (289) and that of the Cymbalum Mundi to Bonaventure Des Periers (274). His broad comparative approach occasionally produces over-sweeping generalizations (and he is too fond for my taste of the expression "mise en abyme"), but the book as a whole is a well-written compendium of little-known facts and plausible speculation, which should appeal to all readers susceptible to the romance of exploration.

BARBARA C. BOWEN

Vanderbilt University, Emerita