Forms of Exile

Abstract

This number of Oltreoceano is dedicated to exile and considers its causes following the establishment of authoritarian and despotic regimes in Europe and in the Americas, where the outcasts arrived from both parts of the Atlantic and from within the same continent. All these elements can be seen in the literatures in English, French, Italian and Spanish analyzed herein. Exile is indeed an essential condition of literature and corresponds to a state of mind in which emotions derive from its intrinsic conditions, that is, from separation and breakage. After analyzing its different etymological nuances (which, according to the Treccani Encyclopedia, derive from political, economic and cultural reasons), the articles focus on the figure of the outcast and his / her relationship with XX- and XXI-century literature and writing mainly from a distance. If the politics of terror and coercion instigate its testimonial urge to witness the facts (the new outcast thus connects with the ancient form of exile of the Latin-American tradition), marginalization also produces its contrary, with the development of a literature of counter-exile. According to Claudio Guillén who coined the term in 1995, exilios and insilios converge in this literature since a different type of writing focused on exploring the new geographical setting allows exiled artists to find refuge in a world of fantasy where they are stimulated by the search for expressive freedom and the possibility to live without subduing to extreme influences. This inner exile does not necessarily require displacement from the homeland: rather than mere social and cultural categories, separation and reintegration are values to reject or adopt spontaneously. There are thus similarities between territorial exile and marginalization within one’s homeland.