Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 1 An Introduction to Coolabah’s Special Issue on Mythical and Fictional Islands Sarah R. MacKinnon sarahk@siar.fm Copyright© 2021 Sarah R. MacKinnon. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged, in accordance with our Creative Commons Licence. Island Studies as a distinct but interdisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry is relatively new, coalescing around the year 2000 (see Grydehøj 2017 and 2020 for an overview of the field). In these past two decades island scholars have grappled with island typologies (Royle & Brinklow, 2018), their location and distribution across the globe (Depraetere, 2009a and b), island epistemologies and methodologies (Baldacchino, 2008), and the complex relationship between the terrestrial, aquatic, and living/non-living elements of island places (Hayward, 2012a and b). As well as discussions around the geographic particularities of islands, scholarly attention has turned to the depiction and representation of island places and spaces in fictive literature (Crane & Fletcher, 2017), and other media (Fitzgerald & Hayward, 2016). In such examples, islands are often used as a metaphor for “socio-political or ontological conditions, challenging and deconstructing common ideas about island spaces and thus inventing and even establishing, [...] new island myths” (Dautel & Schödel, 2017: 229). Islands are enduringly irresistible; they entice, ensnare, imprison, inspire, relax, and revitalize to the point that some people are said to suffer from ‘islomania’ - an obsession with islands (Weale, 1992; Gillis, 2004). Islomania can manifest itself as a physical draw to be islanded in space, separate from the influence of the frenetic humdrum of continental life, or as a psycho- emotional draw to construct or consume ‘islandness’; the essence of geographical precision, comprehensible scale and boundedness by water (Conkling, 2007). Islands are said to occupy "such a powerful place in modern Western imagination that they lend themselves to sophisticated fantasy and mythology" (Baldacchino, 2005: 247-248), and as such they are often “presented as locales of desire, as platforms of paradise, as habitual sites of fascination” (Baldacchino, 2010: 373-374). It is no surprise then that islands feature frequently in western mythology such as The Fortunate Isles in Classical Greek mythology. In Celtic mythologies Tír na nÓg, Mag Mell, Hy-Brasil, Emain Ablach, St Brendan’s Isle, Annwn and Avalon are all island paradises where everlasting beauty, health and happiness reside, and a similar tale can be found in Russian mythology in the island of Buyan. Such mythical islands are not confined to western folklore; the Isles of the Blessed are winterless places of abundance that are an important aspect of the Taoist search for longevity and immortality, and a similar, albeit less cheerful version, also appears in Japanese mailto:sarahk@siar.fm Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 2 mythology. In Hindu cosmology The Puranas, written between the eighth and tenth centuries CE, refer to celestial bodies as islands (the planets) within a cosmic ocean. Fictional islands have formed a central motif of western fantasy literature since Classical times such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, to Renaissance works like Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), colonial-era works like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), to more modern works like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Caspak Trilogy (1918), Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990), Christopher Priest’s Dream Archipelago in The Islanders (2011) and Michael Crummey’s (2014) Sweetland. Recently thematic atlases of fictional islands have gained popularity such as Lewis-Jones’ (2019), Archipelago: An atlas of imagined islands and Dirk Liesemer’s (2019) Phantom Islands: In search of mythical lands. ‘Unreal’ islands have featured on screen to contain and contextualise fantastical narratives such as the films Attack of the Beast Creatures (1980 dir. Michael Stanley), and The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy), as well as television shows such as Thunderbirds (1965-1968), Lost (2004-2010), Stargate Atlantis (2004- 2009) and The I-Land (2019). Such fictional islands tend to be either primeval places where nature rules or high-tech compounds of human ingenuity. Fictional islands have also featured within other media such as the long-running BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs where celebrity guests choose eight recordings (usually musical), a book, and a luxury item with which to be castaway. Fictional islands have also been the subject of several pop songs such as Madonna’s 1987 hit ‘La Isla Bonita’: Tropical the island breeze All of nature wild and free This is where I long to be La isla bonita Madonna herself admitted she invented the name San Pedro, "I don't know where San Pedro is. At that point, I wasn't a person who went on holidays to beautiful islands”.1 Aussie-New Zealand band Crowded House released a song entitled ‘To the island’ in 2020. Lead singer, Neil Finn, commented that the song was partially a response to the Coronavirus pandemic, “Everyone’s looking for a refuge, a place to escape, a myth or a mystery to follow…”2, the lyrics include: Oh, let me move you (Off my feet) Come to the island Where we can save our souls It's just the right size The world is beyond us It's too enormous But oh, the island is just right It's the perfect size Several island scholars have warned that the “richness of literary and cultural islanding could be so obtrusive and pervasive that it could actually threaten and dismiss the physicality of islands as ‘real lived-in places” (Baldacchino; 2008:44), and could re-produce “geographical imaginaries that orientalize an other” (Mountz, 2015: 636). This is certainly possible as some islands have been mediatized to the point of a ‘mythscape’ being created (see MacKinnon & Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 3 Hannan, 2017, although in this case St Kilda no longer has a permanent population). One island scholar has suggested that Island Studies should move away from theories of what constitutes ‘islandness’ that can emphasize the limited characteristics that islands share, ‘toward an engagement with psychologies of island experience’ (Hay; 2013: 209). Other island scholars have acknowledged that there is a striking diversity between the islands of the world while at the same time there is a ‘standardized genre of the island’ that features in media as more than a simple container or backdrop for stories (Owe Ronstrom 2012: 153). Increasingly literary studies and media studies have become sub-fields within Island Studies as a means for understanding the significance of islands within popular culture for human geographical awareness and imagination (Crane & Fletcher, 2016). To this end, several Island Studies journals have published special editions exploring mythical and fictional islands. Shima, The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, published a thematic issue in 2016 with various papers discussing the mythical island of Atlantis and in 2018 a thematic issue on Mermaids, Mercultures and the Aquapelagic Imaginary, while in 2017 The Island Studies Journal published a special thematic section on island fictions and metaphors in contemporary literature. More widely, island scholars have also begun to consider the representations of islandness within media; these include, Graziadei et al.’s discussion of Michael Bay’s film The Island (2017), Lucchitti’s (2013) discussion of the Blasket Islands in Irish literature, Kinane’s (2016) Theorising Literary Islands – The Island Trope in Contemporary Robinsonade Narratives, and Crane and Fletcher’s (2017) Island Genres, Genre Islands discusses islands in popular fiction. In 2020 I wrote a paper about seasteading in speculative fiction literature as a way of bridging the fields of Island Studies and Speculative Fiction Studies. I concluded that while island scholars have begun to engage with media and literature on or about islands there is much discussion to be had about the interaction of sentient beings with their aquatic and terrestrial surroundings outside of an Earthly setting. This special issue of Coolabah features a series of papers that explore how islands are imagined and articulated outside the geographical and biological parameters of reality. Philip Hayward’s paper explores the evolution of the depiction of Skull Island within the King Kong franchise. Juni’chiro Suwa discusses Japanese cosmology through the performance of one of Japan’s earliest written legends. Henry Johnson analyses the representation of a fictitious Channel Island and how a ‘converse parody’ challenges depictions of islanders. Sotirios Triantafyllos’ paper offers a critique of islomania as a draw to the purely paradisiacal, through examination of Early Modern literature that presents islomania as a more nuanced psychological phenomena shaped by political, religious and social mores of the time. Almudena Machado Jiménez’s paper offers a feminist critique of Thomas More’s Utopia and explores the role of women as dominated ‘matrixial entities’, whose roles in society are limited to their embodied (re)productive capabilities and are islands within an island. It is hoped this special thematic issue of Coolabah will introduce Island Studies to a new audience of interdisciplinary scholars and in doing so will encourage new debates and/or viewpoints to engage with the field of island research. Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 4 Endnotes 1. As quoted in Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music- lists/madonnas-50-greatest-songs-126823/la-isla-bonita-from-true-blue-1986-100592/ 2. From Crowded House’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/CrowdedHouseHQ/status/1362159652683702272 Reference List Baldacchino, G., 2005. Islands—objects of representation. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 87(4), pp.247-251. Baldacchino, G., (2008) Studying Islands: On Whose Terms? Some Epistemological and Methodological Challenges to the Pursuit of Island Studies, Island Studies Journal, 3(1), pp. 37-56. Baldacchino, G., (2010) The island lure, International. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 9(4), pp. 373-377. Crane, R. & Fletcher, L., (2016) The genre of islands: Popular fiction and performative geographies, Island Studies Journal, 11(2), pp. 637-650. Crane, R. and Fletcher, L., (2017) Island genres, genre islands: conceptualisation and representation in popular fiction. Washington DC: Rowman & Littlefield. Crichton, M., (1990) Jurassic Park, London: Arrow. Conkling, P., (2007) ‘On islanders and islandness’, Geographical Review, 97(2), pp. 192-201. Crummey, M., (2019) Sweetland, London: Corsair. Depraetere, C. (2008a) The Challenge of Nissology: A Global Outlook on the World Archipelago Part I: Scene Setting the World Archipelago, Island Studies Journal, 3(1), pp. 3- 16. Depraetere, C. (2008b) The Challenge of Nissology: A Global Outlook on the World Archipelago Part II: Scene Setting the World Archipelago, Island Studies Journal, 3(1), pp. 17-36. Dautel, K. & Schödel, K., (2017) Island fictions and metaphors in contemporary literature, Island Studies Journal, 12(2), pp. 229-238. Fitzgerald, J. and Hayward, P., (2016) CHART MYTHOS. Shima, 10(2). 50-67. Gillis, J., (2004) Islands of the mind: How the human imagination created the Atlantic world. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/madonnas-50-greatest-songs-126823/la-isla-bonita-from-true-blue-1986-100592/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/madonnas-50-greatest-songs-126823/la-isla-bonita-from-true-blue-1986-100592/ https://twitter.com/CrowdedHouseHQ/status/1362159652683702272 Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 5 Graziadei, D., Hartmann, B., Kinane, I., Riquet, J. and Samson, B., (2017) Island metapoetics and beyond: introducing island poetics, Part II. Island Studies Journal, 12(2), pp. 253-266. Grydehøj, A., (2017) EDITORIAL: A future of island studies, Island Studies Journal, 12(1), pp. 3-16. Grydehøj, A., (2020) Critical approaches to island geography, Area, 52(1), pp.2-5. Hay, P., (2013) What the Sea Portends: A Reconsideration of Contested Island Tropes. Island Studies Journal, 8(2), pp. 209-232. Hayward, P., (2012a) The constitution of assemblages and the aquapelagality of Haida Gwaii. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, 6(2), pp.1-14. Hayward, P., (2012b) Aquapelagos and aquapelagic assemblages. Shims: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, 6(1), pp.1-11. Homer, (reprint 1987) The Iliad, London: Penguin. Homer, (reprint 2003) The Odyssey, London: Penguin. Island Studies Journal (2017), Thematic section: Island fictions and metaphors in contemporary literature, Vol. 12 (2), pp. 229 - 328. https://www.islandstudies.ca/node/526 Kinane, I., (2016) Theorising literary islands: the island trope in contemporary robinsonade narratives. Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis-Jones, H., (2019) Archipelago: An atlas of imagined islands, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Liesemer, D., (2019) Phantom Islands: In search of mythical lands. London: Haus Publishing. MacKinnon, S.R., (2020) Seasteads and Aquapelagos: Introducing Nissology to Speculative- Fiction Studies. Nordic journal of science fiction and fantasy research, 7(1), pp. 27-41. MacKinnon, S.R. & Hannan, M., (2017) MYTH-MAKING THROUGH MUSIC: The" lost songs" of St Kilda. Shima, 11(2), pp.185-204. More, T., ([1516] 2012 reprint), Utopia, London: Penguin. Mountz, A., (2015) Political Geography II: Islands and Archipelagos, Progress in Human Geography, 39(5): pp. 636–646. Priest, C., (2011) The Islanders, London: Gollancz Publishing. Rice Burroughs, E., (2020) The Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Oxford: Pergamon Media. Ronström, O., (2009) Island Words, Island Worlds: The Origins and Meanings of Words for ‘Islands’ in North-West Europe, Island Studies Journal, 4(2), pp. 163-182. https://www.islandstudies.ca/node/526 Coolabah, Nr 31, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 6 Royle, S.A. and Brinklow, L., (2018) Definitions and typologies. In The Routledge international handbook of island studies (pp. 3-20). Routledge. Shima: The International journal of research into island cultures, (2016), 10(2) Atlantis Special Issue: https://www.shimajournal.org/issues.php#previous Shima: The International journal of research into island cultures, (2018), 12(2) Mermaid Special Issue: https://www.shimajournal.org/issues.php#previous Swift, J., ([1726] 1992 reprint) Gulliver’s Travels, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Weale, D., (1992) Them Times, Charlottetown: Institute of Island Studies. Other Media BBC, (1942 - present) Desert Island Discs, [radio show], available online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr, last accessed 20 May 2021 Stargate Atlantis (2004-2009), Syfy Attack of the Beast Creatures (1980) dir. Michael Stanley, [film], USA: Obelisk Motion Pictures Six Days Seven Nights (1998), dir. Ivan Reitman, [film], USA: Buena Vista Pictures Thunderbirds (1965-1968), ITV Lost (2004-2010), ABC The Wicker Man (1973), dir. Rob Hardy, [film], UK: British Lion Films The I-land (2019), Netflix Crowded House, (2020) To the island, from Dreamers are waiting, Lester Records Ltd. Madonna (1987)- La Isla Bonita from True Blue, Warner Bros. Sarah R. MacKinnon is an independent researcher based on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where she is working to revitalize the Scottish Gaelic language. She completed a PhD in island geography in 2014 and has written papers on islands in science fiction and island music. https://www.shimajournal.org/issues.php#previous https://www.shimajournal.org/issues.php#previous https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr