Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media

Published by Bucknell University Press 2020

Rewriting Crusoe

The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media

Edited by: Jakub Lipski
With contributions by: Robert Mayer , Rivka Swenson , Patrick A. Gill , Przemyslaw Uscinski , Frederick Burwick , Marta Pellerdi , Lora E. Geriguis , Krzysztof Skonieczny , Jennifer Preston Wilson , Ian Kinane and Daniel Cook

In the series Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781684482351

Overview
Contents

About this book

Published in 1719, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is one of those extraordinary literary works whose importance lies not only in the text itself but in its persistently lively afterlife. German author Johann Gottfried Schnabel—who in 1731 penned his own island narrative—coined the term “Robinsonade” to characterize the genre bred by this classic, and today hundreds of examples can be identified worldwide. This celebratory collection of tercentenary essays testifies to the Robinsonade’s endurance, analyzing its various literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural implications in historical context. Contributors trace the Robinsonade’s roots from the eighteenth century to generic affinities in later traditions, including juvenile fiction, science fiction, and apocalyptic fiction, and finally to contemporary adaptations in film, television, theater, and popular culture. Taken together, these essays convince us that the genre’s adapt- ability to changing social and cultural circumstances explains its relevance to this day.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Author / Editor information

JAKUB LIPSKI is an associate professor of English at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He is the author of In Quest of the Self: Masquerade and Travel in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2014) and Painting the Novel: Pictorial Discourse in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (2018).

Reviews

"An impressively ambitious and comprehensive collection of essays on Robinsonades."

— John Richetti, editor of the Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe

“Rewriting Crusoe collects a wide range of international scholars to look at the Robinsonade tradition in various media across three centuries. The collection exhibits the range of responses to Robinson Crusoe and considers how they reflect various cultural and literary concerns.”

— Leah Orr, author of Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690-1730

"Rewriting Crusoe offers invigorating re-examinations of a timeless and timely genre. The broad scope of texts examined and the international profile of its authors makes this book an important contribution to studies of the Robinsonade and testament that this genre still holds power."

— Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, author of Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest in Post/Colonial Island N

"Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media assembles an international group of scholars who present exciting new approaches to the cultural afterlives of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel. Robinson Crusoe is one of the most successful books of all time, ubiquitous first in Europe and then around the world. Novel historians credit it with transforming prose fiction with psychological realism. It has been translated into dozens of languages and it has directly and indirectly inspired a plenitude of adaptations and appropriations in that time. The essays in Rewriting Crusoe follow the Robinsonades themselves across genres and media—fiction, film, plays, and TV—and they respond to a range of works, from immediate, direct responses in Britain to more distant and looser echoes across the globe. What is original and distinctive about the volume is its demonstration of how Robinsonades not only challenge key aspects of the archetypal castaway narrative—masculine individualism, literary realism, and ecological and colonial domination—but that these ideologies have always been in a process of contestation. Together the essays illuminate what editor Jakub Lipski calls 'the potential of the Robinsonade to adapt to changing circumstances, in terms of content and genre, and … its continuous relevance in new contexts.' The book provides a model for the potential of collaborative approaches to diffuse literary afterlives, and it is essential reading for those interested in the impact of eighteenth-century ideas through the ages."

— Nicholas Seager, Co-editor of The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Robert Mayer Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Jakub Lipski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. Exploring and Transcending the Genre
1. “Mushrooms, Capers, and Other Sorts of Pickles”: Remaking Genre in Peter Longueville’s The Hermit (1727) Rivka Swenson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. “If I Had . . .”: Counterfactuals, Imaginary Realities, and the Poetics of the Postmodern Robinsonade Patrick Gill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Part Two. National Contexts
3. Castaways and Colonialism: Dislocating Cultural Encounter in The Female American (1767) Przemysław Uściński Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Setting the Scene for the Polish Robinsonade: The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (1776) by Ignacy Krasicki and the Early Reception of Robinson Crusoe in Poland, 1769–1775 Jakub Lipski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
5. The Rise and Fall of Robinson Crusoe on the London Stage Frederick Burwick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
6. Islands in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886): A Counter-Robinsonade Márta Pellérdi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Part Three. Ecocritical Readings
7. Stormy Weather and the Gentle Isle: Apprehending the Environment of Three Robinsonades Lora E. Geriguis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
8. Robinson’s Becoming-Earth in Michel Tournier’s Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (1967) Krzysztof Skonieczny Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Part Four. The Robinsonade and the Present Condition
9. “The True State of Our Condition”: The Twenty-First- Century Worker as Castaway Jennifer Preston Wilson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
10. Gilligan’s Wake, Gilligan’s Island, and Historiographizing American Popular Culture Ian Kinane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
Coda: Rewriting the Robinsonade Daniel Cook Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193

Language: English
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 212
Keywords: Robinsonade; Defoe; adaptation; intertextuality; Crusoe; Gilligan's Island; film studies; cultural transfer; exploration; ecocriticism; travel narrative; popular culture; postmodern; desert island; castaway; Robinson Crusoe

eBook

Published: September 17, 2020
ISBN: 9781684482351