“Its importance,” says Yi-Fu Tuan, “lies in the imagination.”(Tuan,1974, p. 118) Tuan continues, “it symbolizes a state of prelapsarian innocence and bliss, quarantined by the sea from the ills of the continent.” (118) Buddhists knew four islands of “excellent earth,” Hindus spoke of an “essential island” sprinkled with precious gems. Chinese legends tell of “Blessed Isles” and of the mystical Isles of Genii. Polynesians thought of Paradise as an island. The legend of the “Island of the Blessed” originated in archaic Greece, and Celtic people had a similar story. Ireland’s St. Brendan discovered an island “where no tempest revels, where for nourishment one inhales the perfume of flowers from Paradise,” and St. Brendan’s isles were known in medieval times as “The Fortunate Isles.” Ponce de Leon, looking for the Fountain of Youth in Florida (which he believed to be an island), associated all enchantment with insularity. (Tuan,1974, 118-19)
Classical Greece, the source of much nourishment for the imagination of Western Civilization, was rich in island lore. Greek gods were known to reside either on islands or on mountains (pseudo-islands). When Odysseus struggled to return home from the Trojan War, he was detained by island-dwelling goddesses (Circe and Kalypso) and entertained by Nausicaa, an island nymph on the fantasy island of Phaekia. And when he arrived at last at home, he was on the Island of Ithaka, his Kingdom. After dispatching the rude suitors who were courting his faithful wife Penelope, Odysseus settled down to family life and his well-earned retirement. Great warriors often look to islands for their later years.
When Dante created his fantasy of the Christian afterlife early in the fourteenth century, he imagined the Mountain of Purgatory as an island, accessible only by ferries. Dante’s Purgatory is not a place of punishment, but is a genuine penitentiary. Penitents there confront the true causes of their suffering and work actively to become free of them. When they succeed, the whole island rejoices with them as they earn their ascent toward enlightenment. At the top of the Mountain of Purgatory is Dante’s conception of the Earthly Paradise: an island surrounded by a sea of fire, an island within an island. The islands at the center of Dante’s Comedy are settings for learning and spiritual growth.
The setting for Shakespeare’s The Tempest is an island, presumably in the Mediterranean not far from Italy. The wizard Prospero, illegally deposed as king of Naples, lives there in exile with his daughter, Miranda, and his uncommon servants, Ariel and Caliban. A storm of Prospero’s making brings his shipwrecked enemies ashore, and the play unfolds as his usurpers suffer illusions and magical transformations which eventually confound them and restore Propsero’s rightful claim to his throne. Like Shakespeare’s stage in London, Prospero’s island is a place of magic and enchantment, creating small illusions which reveal larger truths. The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final play, and most critics regard it as his farewell to the magic of theatrical writing that has been his life. It is a place of revealed truth, not the least of which is Miranda’s discovery (like many teenagers raised in the isolation of island life) when she first sees handsome young men:
O brave new world
That has such people in it”
(Tempest, V, 184-5)
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, the most admired and influential authors of the Western literary tradition, all chose islands as settings for the most mature works of their imaginative art. It may be mere coincidence, but it may also be an affirmation of the ancient human habit of regarding islands as places where the human imagination is at home.
Islands captured the imaginations of many of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. It is likely that The Tempest (1611) was strongly influenced by the tales of discovery that flooded Europe from the adventurers who told of new found lands in the Americas. Sir Walter Raleigh was the founder of a grand plan to establish an English colony in North America, partly for the gold and jewels that were supposedly there, but also for the greater glory of English fame and power. His dreams were realized in 1585 when the first English settlement in America was established on Roanoke Island, a coastal island in North Carolina that is less than half the size of Vashon Island. The mystery of the disappearance of these settlers remains unsolved to this day, but their story captured the imaginations of a whole generation of Englishmen, including Shakespeare, and continues to haunt the minds of American historians.
