Interruption as Narrative Technique in the Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Éole by C.E. Boniface

When C. E. Boniface published his Narrative of the Shipwreck of the French Vessel the Éole in 1829, he was departing from comic drama, the literary form with which he had been chiefly associated. This article explains his interest in the adventures of the survivors of the shipwreck of the Éole by reference to his own experience of ‘interruption’, namely his sense of being metaphorically shipwrecked on the coast of southern Africa. Thereafter, in the telling of the tale, interruption, expressed through narrative displacement or mise-en-abyme, also becomes the means by which Boniface inserts himself into the narrative, mediating between himself and the reader, and creating a sense of turbulence that mirrors the instability of his life.