CABRERA: DE L'ÎLE PARADIS À L'ÎLE ENFER

Authors

  • Isabelle Bes Hoghton
Keywords: Cabrera, island prison, war prisoner, Napoleon, 1808

Abstract

After the surrender of General Dupont in Baylen on the 24th of July 1808, about 9000 French soldiers were declared prisoners of war and sent to the island of Cabrera in May 1809. Only 3700 returned to France in May 1814. Some¡ survivors have left a testimony of these long years of misery. Their war memories published in the first half of the XIX th century rocked numerous pre-romanticist and romanticist symbols: the myth of the island refuge and the island paradise. Cabrera became an island prison and the island of hell. All the natural sites of the island acquired a new sinister dimension: the abundant nature of the island of Rousseau was converted to a barren desert of rocks and death, the protective blue sea to the main obstacle to freedom and life, the fountain, source of life to a source of death, the caves to an antechamber to the kingdom of Darkness…

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Author Biography

Isabelle Bes Hoghton

Universitat de les Illes Balears
How to Cite
Bes Hoghton, I. (2008). CABRERA: DE L’ÎLE PARADIS À L’ÎLE ENFER. Anales de Filología Francesa, 16. Retrieved from https://revistas.um.es/analesff/article/view/70831
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Articles