Whether one thinks of the modern world or of more remote times, both seem to have been affected – if not moulded – by the interaction between the concepts of authority and displacement. Indeed, political and social sources of authority have often been the causes of major geographical displacements, as can be illustrated by the numerous waves of migration which have been observed in the past and which are still present today, such as the transportation of slaves from African to American coasts in colonial times.

If displacement can often be understood as spatial displacement, it can also be synonymous with psychological, social, and even aesthetic displacement, for instance through different artistic means or through the use of stylistic discursive devices. Displacement also entails dis-placement, dis-location, as well as dislocation, or chaos. This suggests that the etymological meaning of the term authority, auctoritas, has to be highlighted, thus referring to the author of a particular work and to the different manifestations of the authorial persona in a work of art.

This collection of essays in two volumes examines the relationships between the concepts of authority and displacement in the English-speaking world, without restricting the analysis to a particular area, or to the field of literature. Some essays do, indeed, deal with literature, from different spatial areas and temporal eras, while others look into these concepts from a more cultural or aesthetic point of view.

Volume One, Exploring Europe/from Europe, includes essays on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, John Ross’s Second Exploration Voyage, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, in addition to investigations of Rose Tremain’s novels, Disguise by Hugo Hamilton, and the cinematic adaptation of Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly by Chantal Akerman. The volume concludes with a study of two novels by the Anglo-Sudanese writer Jamal Mahjoub.