Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe Tuesday, October 12, 2010 -related to survivor (reality TV – Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe -castaway television production, borrows from Robinson Crusoe -salvage things from boat -exile island -romantic ideals, no comforts, build own shelter, find own food, be connected to the land with ideas of competition/escape -Swiss Family Robinson, 1812 -how to be responsible, take care ... in your own space fending for yourself -films -abridged, recommended for children, popularized by 1762 (Rousseau’s ideas), central to providing an education for children -Gilligan’s Island -Castaway -Lost -Real Life, lost job, wrote book -Survivor man (extremes to survive) -Man v Wild -Lord of the Flies -Walden -The Other Side of Heaven, George Walden -Into the Wild -The Beach -Dances with Wolves -The Scholar Gypsy -Foe, J.M. -Gulliver’s Travels -what is it about Robinson Crusoe that makes it appealing for 300 years? -central part of our culture -dark rough side of what it means to survive ALEXANDER SELKIRK -Robinson Crusoe Island in South Pacific, Chilean gov’t renamed 1966 (formerly Waun Fernandez Island...) -actual island in Caribbean -where Alexander Selkirk was marooned in 1704 (sailing on trade vessel, much like Crusoe, he and captain have disagreement) thinks ship is not safe anymore, drops off as island, lives there for 4 years, 4 months -ship breaks apart, most of crew dies, another English ship comes to rescue -found him wearing goatskin (Broadview edition shows his time there), what he has: written 1712, clothes bedding, powder, bullets, tobacco, bible, books...first 8 months, melancholy, terror of being left alone, two huts, read, sang, prayed, better Christian in solitude -Defoe drew on other accounts of castaways
-writing drawing on survival, Defoe borrows from these sources, not all critics saw this as borrowing, they said plagiarism from Selkirk’s, not a rewriting, a plagiarism, unfair accusation (Selkirk’s is bared down/basic, many important differences, Crusoe didn’t ask to be left on the island, Selkirk when he was found, couldn’t talk, Crusoe is picked up three decades later, teaching Friday...makes bare bone story into psychological account, goes far beyond what Selkirk’s account ever did) -we get time before and after island -people are somewhat troubled of whether it is fiction or fact, people were more ok with the blurry boundary than we are today (A Million Little Pieces) -a different time where travel was not ordinary, not leaving county common -seeing before and after the island, Crusoe’s time in captivity, his farming endeavours...not shown in accounts, the wolf attacks scenes, Friday taunting the bear, and abridged version enters popular imagination -more to Crusoe than we pick up on in popular account -like Don Quixote Robinson Crusoe exists before novel -Robinson Crusoe sometimes called the first“novel of incident”contrasted with “novel of character” -“enforced unity of action” (M.H. Abrams)in a way DQ couldn’t -episodic, lots of things happen but they’re important to each other, they’re more entwined than DQ
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