“There is another isle in my collection, the memory of which besieges me”: The Island as a Creative Archive in R. L. Stevenson’s Works
Due to their separate and isolated nature, islands have often been considered as zoological, botanical and even anthropological conservatories where endemic plants, species, but also cultures and languages may be preserved. Islands indeed seem to have their own peculiar temporality, as their essenti...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
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Études écossaises
2026
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | Due to their separate and isolated nature, islands have often been considered as zoological, botanical and even anthropological conservatories where endemic plants, species, but also cultures and languages may be preserved. Islands indeed seem to have their own peculiar temporality, as their essentially original nature allows their visitors to somehow reconnect with times immemorial. In his essay “Memoirs of an Islet”—from which the title’s quote is derived—Robert Louis Stevenson dwells at length on the island’s ability to serve as a kind of historical, personal, and natural archive, where various strata of memories may pile up and be explored anew.This article analyses the way in which Stevenson relied on the island’s archival potential, both in his essays and in his insular fiction, focusing in particular on The Wrecker and The Ebb‑Tide. It studies in particular the link between memory and territory, and the way in which their dynamic interaction may act as a creative driving force and as an endless source of fictional inspiration. Rather than a frozen, immutable site of memory, I argue that the island becomes, in fact, a place where memory may be reactivated as it is being surveyed, a mutable or heterochronic archive where different temporal and fictional strata are led to creatively interact. This article thus strives to determine whether the island in Stevenson’s fiction may be read as a Derridean archive, or rather as a Foucauldian heterotopia, and analyse how these concepts may help shed light on the link between memory and territory in Stevenson’s works. |
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