"Today our most significant places are not those we dwell in
physically but those we dwell on
mentally," contends this engaging meditation on the island in European consciousness. Ancient and medieval Europeans, says Gillis, saw islands as holy sites and conjured a geography of mythic isles just beyond the known world. Early moderns located paradise and utopia on islands that explorers were beginning to glimpse. Enlightenment thinkers and later anthropologists imagined islands as ideal laboratories where natural man could be studied in isolation from the corruptions of civilization. And in a contemporary world, we still think of islands as remote havens of rusticity and authenticity, with the iconic island summer cottage being a refuge from urban modernity and a place to recapture lost childhood. Cultural historian Gillis (A World of Their Own Making
) covers religion, mapmaking, desert island cartoons and reminiscences about his own summer house on a Maine island in this thoughtful survey. He explores the mythology and the reality of islands, both celebrating the golden age of Atlantic civilization centered on wealthy, cosmopolitan Caribbean islands and exposing the current economic problems—veiled by romanticized imagery projected by the tourist industry—that many islands face. The result is an erudite and beautifully written work of cultural and intellectual history, bursting with evocative ideas and connections. Photos. (Nov.)
