Robinson Crusoe Myths and Metamorphoses [Paperback]

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.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 Poel³G