The island of fertility
The island of fertility (original title English "The Isle of Pines" ) is a 1668 published shipwreck story, dystopia and early Robinsonade by Henry Neville .
background
The book is politically influenced because Neville was a Republican and an opponent of the English royal family ( House of Stuart ). Having spent several years traveling on mainland Europe, he was aware of the socio-political concerns of the 17th century . The island story is framed by Dutch explorers, who were better organized and equipped than the English emigrants three generations earlier. The Dutch explorers have to save a small English colonial nation from chaos. The book was written at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War .
action
It tells the story of these shipwrecked people - the British George Pine and four female survivors who were stranded on an idyllic island. Pine finds that the island produces plenty of food with little exertion. A short time later he enjoys a life with a lot of free time and maintains an open relationship with all four women. Each of these women gives birth to babies, which now grow into their own tribes and recognize Pine as patriarch . One of the women, a black slave, founds a tribe called "Phills" with her children. This tribe rejects the application of laws and rules and the Bible , which is needed to create social order. Eventually one of the Phills tribe raped a woman from the Stark tribe, sparking a civil war . Now some Dutch explorers come and bring the Stark tribe the weapons they need to put down the uprising. The story is written from the perspective of the Dutch explorers and begins with their arrival and the “discovery” of a primitive, English-speaking white race. Explorers note that the islanders are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of George Pine and have lost the technological and industrial advantages of their British ancestry in just three generations. The Dutch find out that the English have blunt axes that have never been sharpened. The island itself is so rich in terms of food and fauna that the islanders let their newborn babies be naked without hesitation.
Literary consideration
While food is in abundance, the narrator asks questions about laziness and dependence on nature. Questions are also raised that make the novel conform to utopian literature. At the same time, a reversal of the usual pattern can be observed. Instead of a progressive society from which the traveler can learn, the Dutch explorers discover a primitive island race seeking support in a civil war, although the island is initially described as a paradise of sexual freedom and idyllic leisure. History as a regression into a primitive, critical and unproductive state is therefore a dystopia . The lack of creativity and industry is exacerbated as the islanders have many children and after three generations leave behind a large population without having gone through scientific or artistic developments. Some literary experts suggest that the name Pines is a possible anagram of penis , indicating the main sexual preoccupation of the early settlers .
literature
- Worthington Chauncey Ford: The Isle Of Pines (1668). An Essay in Bibliography . Dodo Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-4065-4979-9 . (Reprinted from the Boston, Mass. 1920 edition).
- Jürg Glauser : The textual dynamics of polygamy. On the Circulation of Fictional Energy in Early Modern Narrative: The Example of Joris Pines in the Scandinavian 17th and 18th Centuries . In: Annegret Heitmann, Jürg Glauser (Ed.): Negotiations with the New Historicism. The text-context problem in literary studies . Verlag Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1436-7 , pp. 273-301.