ABSTRACT
The notion of exile oscillates between two ideas: that of separation and that of community. The relation between exile and community is predicated on the difference between the individual and the collective, he is an individual who acts in opposition to the norms and principles which govern community. David Williams analyses the position of the exile through pagan and Christian images of community in the early Medieval period. The medieval polarity between the images of the poet and the exile blended into one image in later theories, particularly in Romanticism. The twentieth-century exile follows the long literary tradition of scribes, scholars and poets who, either physically or spiritually, lived outside the centre, alienated from their community or nation. Irish and Polish exile in the twentieth century illustrates the aesthetic and political aspects of estrangement. Desmond Hogan's exile seems to be an exile from community and homeland into various historical and cultural sensations.
