The term ontological Robinsonade (Lojacono 2014) refers to narratives in which insularity is not merely an adventure motif but an existential condition, where the island becomes a space of transformation in which the protagonist abandons a former self in order to become a new being—often in a situation that becomes a matter of life or death. This concept is proposed as a contribution to the study of insular fiction, offering a new perspective on narratives traditionally labelled “robinsonades.”

The present materials bring together selected results of ongoing research and are made available as a working tool for scholars. Their purpose is to facilitate further investigation, enabling other researchers to advance more rapidly and to explore the field more extensively. They are intended to encourage the refinement and expansion of the concept of the ontological Robinsonade, as well as the identification of additional canonical texts and new areas of inquiry.

A short visual explanation of the ontological Robinsonade is provided in this dataset. The accompanying document (Ontological_Robinsonade_Concept.pdf) offers a schematic representation of this narrative form, including (1) an actantial schema adapted to insular fiction and (2) an illustration of mimetic desire.

Two characteristics are generally required for an island narrative to qualify as an ontological Robinsonade:
1.	The mediation of the desire for the island (in the sense of René Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire”).
2.	The presence of primitivism, linked to the myth of origins and to Mircea Eliade’s concept of the “Great time.”

In such narratives, the island is not always a traditional geographical setting but may also function as a metaphorical space of isolation, as in J. G. Ballard’s Concrete Island or Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Los mares del Sur.

For readers approaching this corpus, it may be useful to begin with a few key novels in which the role of the predecessor is particularly clear. These include Simenon’s Long cours (1936), where the predecessor is Mittel; Riera’s L’Île Flaubert (1990), where the predecessor is Beno; and Perry’s L’Île d’un autre (1982), where the predecessor is M.

Readers may also wish to consider a second set of texts illustrating the role of primitivism. Simenon’s Touriste de bananes (1938) is particularly emblematic, as it gives its name to the figure of the “banana tourist,” while Vázquez Montalbán’s Los mares del Sur (1979) offers an example of social primitivism in an urban context.

See also Basic Bibliography on Myth (Focus: Insularity), available on Zenodo, which provides a complementary theoretical and critical framework for the study of myth and insular narratives.
https://zenodo.org/records/18909885

An additional bibliography of insular novels and potential Robinsonades is currently in preparation. It is conceived as an open reservoir of texts that may be of interest to researchers and may contribute to the identification of further ontological Robinsonades as well as further research on the island novel.