''Penguin Island'' (1908; french: L'Île des Pingouins) is a satirical fictional history by Nobel Prize-winning French author

Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie França ...

Plot

''Penguin Island'' is written in the style of a sprawling 18th- and 19th-century history book, concerned with grand

metanarratives A metanarrative (also meta-narrative and grand narrative; french: métarécit) is a narrative ''about'' narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet ...

, mythologizing heroes, hagiography and romantic nationalism. It is about a fictitious island, inhabited by great auks, that existed off the northern coast of Europe. The history begins when a wayward Christian missionary monk lands on the island and perceives the

upright Body relative directions (also known as egocentric coordinates) are geometrical orientations relative to a body such as a human person's. The most common ones are: left and right; forward(s) and backward(s); up and down. They form three pairs ...

, unafraid auks as a sort of pre-Christian society of

noble A noble is a member of the nobility. Noble may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Noble Glacier, King George Island * Noble Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land * Noble Peak, Wiencke Island * Noble Rocks, Graham Land Australia * Noble Island, Gr ...

pagans. Mostly blind from reflections from the polar ice and somewhat deaf from the roar of the sea, having mistaken the animals for humans, he baptizes them. This causes a problem for The Lord, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. After consulting with saints and theologians in Heaven, He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans with only a few physical traces of their ornithological origin, and giving them each a soul. Thus begins the history of Penguinia, and from there forward the history mirrors that of France (and more generally of Western Europe, including German-speaking areas and the British Isles). The narrative spans from the Migration Period (" Dark Ages"), when the Germanic tribes fought incessantly among themselves for territory; to the heroic

Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...

with the rise of

Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first ...

("Draco the Great") and conflicts with

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

raiders (" porpoises"); through the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

(Erasmus); and up to the modern era with motor cars; and even into a future time in which a thriving high-tech civilization is destroyed by a campaign of terrorist bombings, and everything begins again in an endless cycle.

Analysis

The longest-running plot thread, and probably the best known, satirizes the

Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

, though both brief and complex satires of European history, politics, philosophy and theology are present throughout the novel. At various points, real historical figures such as Columba and

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...

are part of the story, as well as fictionalized characters who represent historical people. ''Penguin Island'' is a satire on society and human nature in which

morals Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...

, customs, and the origin of religion and laws are lampooned. For example, the origin of private property is presented as starting with the brutal and shameless murder of a farmer, and the seizure of his land, by a physically larger and stronger neighbour. Girdler B. Fitch has postulated the influence of illustrations by Grandville ( Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard) on France's conception of Penguin Island.

References

External links

*
''Penguin Island''
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

(scanned books original editions color illustrated) * {{Authority control 1908 French novels Novels by Anatole France French satirical novels Books about birds Novels set on fictional islands Novels set in fictional countries