Robinson Crusoe - Myths and Metamorphoses - by Lieve Spaas & Brian Stimpson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

'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