From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe: A Survey of Early Western Island Literature

Abstract

This paper examines the history and development of books about islands in Western culture. Islands are prominent in Homer’s Odyssey, and Plato’s island of Atlantis is perhaps the most famous mythical island of all time. The Greeks were the first to develop the island-book as such, but Roman writers showed much less interest in insular themes. The article traces the history of the immrama (medieval Irish accounts of mythical Atlantic island voyages), notes the importance of islands in Marco Polo and John of Mandeville, describes the rise of the isolario, or island-book illustrated with maps, and concludes with the emergence of the Robinsonade.

The Balearic Islands in ‘Island Encyclopaedias’, 700 BCE–1700 CE: An historical and archaeological assessment of island knowledge production with suggestions for future research

“…The work of José Manuel Montesdeoca Medina (2001Medina ( , 2017, Chet Van Duzer (2006) and George Tolias (2007) provided us with a foundation from which we continued to compile a list of as many island encyclopaedias as possible in languages we could read (Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, 5 French, English and German), supplemented by sources with translations (for example from Arabic or Ottoman Turkish).…”