Abstract
In the French Enlightenment, the shape and layout of the world supposedly became clearer to Europeans as they traveled and colonized overseas. Yet, as they learned more about what lay beyond their shores, travelers, scientists, and authors also clung to theories and explanations that were more about what they wanted to find or what they feared than what was actually there. Paradoxically, the expansion of the sciences of the Earth was driven both by new findings and by the reworking of mythology, religious beliefs, and utopian dreams and losses. As France lost many parts of its first major colonial expansion through the eighteenth century, authors depicted the world through imaginary geographies and through the assumption that human and natural histories were deeply intertwined and affected one another reciprocally, revealing anxieties of disappearing empire. Natural disasters and climate destruction were ‘proof’ that either French colonists or colonized peoples had lost their way. This paper explores how oceans and islands were understood through this framework in the French Enlightenment. Focusing on several utopian texts, I examine the ambiguous status of islands and their emotional, moral geographies that place them somewhere between knowledge and confusion, longing and fear, French and exotic, paradise and hell.
Presenters
Hanna RomanAssistant Professor, French and Francophone Studies, Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Oceanic Journeys: Multicultural Approaches in the Humanities
KEYWORDS
Islands, Ocean, Natural history, Geography, Enlightenment, France
