Trading Places: Public and Private Transport in Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la mer

Set in the exiled poet's "marginal" home in the Channel Islands, Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) elaborates a vision of creative potential. Science, dreams, meditation, natural forces, physical prowess, selfess devotion, even death – all serve as vehicles for expanding the boundaries of our universe, both internal and external. The protagonist, Gilliatt, avails himself of these multiple modes of transport to challenge our notion of the humanly – and inhumanly – possible. Transcending his own limits to conquer a wide array of "monsters," he links the motifs of movement and displacement in Hugo's hypertropic narrative to the transpositions of metaphor, the sublime, and political exile. (KMG)