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.

Island Studies Journal

In the final analysis, Kinane's text serves as a detailed primer for readers interested in how early modern British literary geographies of the Pacific continue to facilitate neocolonial textual, broadcast media, and filmic tropes in a seemingly postcolonial world.

Geographical Research

In Theorising Literary Islands Ian Kinane deals with the notion that Robinson Crusoe persuaded readers that ‘islands were not confining but liberating; not lonely but contemplative’. Certainly the ‘Robinsonade’ genre to which Defoe’s Crusoe gave rise in literature and later other media has had major impacts on the perception of islands in guises from narratives of imperialism to contemporary tourism to any one of a huge number of insular destinations marketed ¬– or perhaps given an often challenging reality, rather hyped – as ‘paradise islands’. Focusing on the Pacific, Hau’ofa’s ‘sea of islands’, Kinane considers the ‘imaginative representation of island landscapes’ and its meaning at spatial and cultural scales ranging from the ‘topography of self’ – ‘I-land’ – to the seemingly endless mass appeal of the television series Survivor. Theorising Literary Islands will be of value to scholars of literature and also has wider appeal to those interested in the burgeoning field of Island Studies.

Stephen A. Royle, Emeritus Professor of Island Geography, Queen's University Belfast

Theorising Literary Islands makes an important contribution to island studies by pulling disparate prior scholarship on the island motif into conversation with under-discussed castaway texts. By drawing together various threads into a cohesive discussion, Kinane makes a cogent argument for larger implications of Western literary and cinematic islands, one that will benefit island scholars worldwide.

Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies, University of North Dakota, USA

Theorising Literary Islands is a lively addition to island studies exploring the evolution of the Robinsonade from founding literary narratives such as Robinson Crusoe to twenty-first century remediations in film and television including Lost and Survivor. Kinane offers new understanding of the ongoing centrality of the geo-imaginary space of the Pacific to discourses of neo-colonialism, Western individualism, and redemption within contemporary British and American culture.

Sherae Deckard, Assistant Professor, University College Dublin

Kinane's text serves as a detailed primer for readers interested in how early modern British literary geographies of the Pacific continue to facilitate neocolonial textual, broadcast media, and filmic tropes in a seemingly postcolonial world.

Charles Travis, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas