Shores, cliffs and shifting frames : the island as a trope of non-insularity

Abstract

Through a discussion of selected lines from Matthew Arnold, John Donne and Paul Celan, and with an approach informed by the work of Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot, this essay looks at the way islands often function as tropes of insularity while, at the same time, indicating the way insularity is always contaminated by the other through iterability and metaphoricity. Shores are discussed as a liminal space in which boundaries are subject to constant drifting and change, hence making islands and insularity inseparable from that which would seem to oppose them, that is, the sea and openness to the other.