Islands of the Mind; How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World

by John R. Gillis

• ISBN13: 9781403965066
• ISBN10: 1403965064
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-11-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In Islands of the Mind , John R. Gillis takes us on a rich and fascinating journey through the centuries and across the ocean in search of the meanings of islands in the collective imagination and history of the western world. Islands, he shows, have always sparked the imagination with notions of danger, adventure, isolation and even perfection. They have lured explorers and been the reason for battles between colonizing empires. Islands have given birth to unique cultures, they have prompted scientists and anthropologists with clues to human beginnings, and have been known to occasionally disappear without a trace. Gillis unravels both the actual and conceptual history of islands, beginning with the imagined lands of Homer's Odyssey and ending with a look at modern-day cruise destinations. This multifaceted survey shows how and why islands have occupied such a central place in the western imagination, and how they came to be master symbols and inexhaustible metaphors for so many different things.

Author Biography

John Gillis is a social and cultural historian whose work spans German, British, and American history. He is author or editor of nine books, including Youth and History, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, and A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family
Values. He has taught at Stanford, Princeton, and Rutgers Universities and has been a fellow at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He is a mainlander by birth but for forty summers has been an islander by choice in the Gulf of Maine.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction Islomania	1	(4)
Ancient Mariners of the Mind	5	(18)
Medieval Islomania	23	(22)
Islands as Mental Stepping-Stones in the Age of Discovery	45	(20)
Searching the Seas for Island Edens and Utopias	65	(18)
Islands in the Making of Atlantic Civilization	83	(18)
Science Discovers Nature's Islands and Islanders	101	(20)
Worlds of Loss: Islands in the Nineteenth Century	121	(22)
Islands Looming: The Imagined Isles of Global Tourism	143	(24)
Epilogue Returning Home to Earth Island	167	(2)
Notes	169	(26)
Bibliography	195	(14)
Index	209