Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphoses

by Lieve Spaas (Editor), Brian Stimpson (Editor)

Overview

Robinson Crusoe explores Defoe's story, the legend it captured, the universal desire which underlies the myth and a range of modern re-writings which reveal a continued fascination with the problematic character of this narrative. Whether envisaged as an heroic rejection of the old world order, a piece of pre-colonialist propaganda or a tale raising archetypal problems of 'otherness' and 'inequality', the mythic value of Crusoe has become a pretext over many centuries for an examination of some of the fundamental problems of existence. This collection of essays examines, from a wide range of critical and philosophical perspectives, the cultural manifestations of Robinson Crusoe in different centuries, in different media, in different genres.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333631737
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	06/18/1996
Edition description:	1996
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors - Preface - Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - Unwrapping Crusoe: Retrospective and Prospective Views; L.James - TEXT AND CONTEXT - Robinson Crusoe's Eighteenth Century Context; A.Downie -Crusoe's Women, Or: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; I.Bell - Crusoe, Cannibalism and Empire; M.Ellis - Crusoe in the South Seas: Beachcombers, Missionaries and the Myth of the Castaway; V.Smith - Serving God or Mammon? Echoes from Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and Sinbad the Sailor in Robinson Crusoe; S.Attar - Narcissus and Friday: From Classical to Anthropological Myth; L.Spaas - Caliban, Friday and Their Masters; J-J.Hamm - RESONANCES - Charles Guilbert de Pixerecourt's Robinson Crusoe (1805); C.N.Smith - Female Castaways; A.Saxton - Resisting Robinson Crusoe in Dechanel's Film; S.Meagher - The Robinson Myth in Jean-Richard Bloch's Le Robinson juif; C.Figuerola - SUBVERSIONS - Myth as Microscope: Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique; L.Milne - 'Skilful in the Usury of Time': Michel Tournier and the Critique of Economism; A.Purdy - Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique: Tournier, Seducation and Paternity; E.Wilson - 'Between Me and Thee is a Great Gulf Fixed': the Crusoe Presence in Walcott's Early Poetry; S.Brown - 'With Crusoe the Slave and Friday the Boss': Derek Walcott's Pantomime; B.Jones - The Ulyssean Crusoe and the Quest for Redemption in J.M. Coetzee's Foe and Derek Walcott's Omeros; P.Burnett - Foe: Metafiction and the Discourse of Power; P.Corcoran - Daniel Defoe as Character: Subversion of the Myths of Robinson Crusoe and of the Author; J-P.Engelibert - INTROVERSIONS - 'In Contemplation of My Deliverance': Robinson Crusoe and Pincher Martin; K.McCarron - 'Insulaire que tu es, Ile -': Valery, the 'Robinson Crusoe of the Mind'; B.Stimpson - Postface - Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

'In Spaas and Stimpson, Bridget Jones takes Walcott's drama Pantomime as her subject. In With Crusoe the slave and Friday the boss: Derek Walcott's Pantomime' she too draws on the redemptive aspect of Defoe's text, and explores the ironizing inversions which the play stages...the essay also reminds the reader that pantomime is very much a Caribbean tradition.' - The Year's Work 96

From the Publisher

A collection of 22 essays arising from a September 1993 conference held in London, on the development of the Crusoe myth, and its reappearances in many different forms and countries. The problem of assigning "Robinson Crusoe" to its proper classification<-->whether children's story, traveller's tale, religious diary, or myth for adults<-->is addressed. Contributions are arranged in four sections: text and context, resonances, subversions, and introversions. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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