Indian Ocean Literature

Indian Ocean Literature

The Indian Ocean is home to many literary texts, from Greco-Roman times to the Thousand and One nights, the matrix of many narratives, which portrays Sinbad the Merchant, through a fantastic and popular twist of the mind, however based on real details of navigation in this first ocean of globalisation. Indeed, combining Indian and Chinese literatures, among the oldest on the planet, it can be characterized as the most fictionalized ocean, having been the backbone of many tales, novels and poetic work.

This was further enhanced when Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, paving the way for Vasco da Gama, who reached Malindi, before being guided to Calicut, the desired port of spices, by a mualim or regional pilot. The Portuguese poet Camoens then wrote his famous Luciads.

Mark Twain sejourned there. So did Bernardin de Saint Pierre, who invented the naturalist novel with Paul and Virginie, an idyllic and tragic novel under the tropics, in Mauritius. Charles Baudelaire also carried his spleen there, experimenting the correspondences and falling in love with Creole and Indian ladies, as expressed in his poems "La dame créole" or "A une malabaraise". In La Réunion, Rouget Leconte de Lisle is foremost, with symbolist poetry. Many more poets went to the Mascarene islands, like Paul-Jean Toulet.