SOURCE: Tucker, Martin. An introduction to Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Biographical Dictionary, edited by Martin Tucker, pp. xiii-xxiv. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

In the following excerpt, Tucker attempts to define the concept of exile in historical, cultural, and literary terms, comparing various exiles' notions about the theme.

Because the awareness of exile has recently grown to such an extent—witnessed by the many studies of it published in the past fifty years and by university courses specifically centered on the definition and experience of exile—the term has become a generalized one. Exile as a concept and as an experience is never vague, but it is a complex of emotional reactions and residues of feelings. Its complex nature, based on a simple fact of rejection or isolation, has caused sympathetic observers and speculative commentators to apply its characteristics in varying ways and means...