Robinson Crusoe After 300 Years

Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley (Eds.)

2021
218 pages
$42.50
ISBN 9781684482863
Transits

When Defoe published The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719, he could not have imagined that Crusoe, Friday, and a footprint in the sand would enjoy global recognition 300 years later. Why - and how - does Crusoe's story resonate today? There is no shortage of explanations for the longevity of Defoe's creation, which has been interpreted as both religious allegory and frontier myth, with Crusoe seen as an example of the self-sufficient adventurer and the archetypal colonizer and capitalist. Defoe's original has been reimagined multiple times in legions of Robinsonade or castaway stories. But there is still much more to say - the Crusoe myth is far from spent. This wide-ranging collection brings together eleven scholars who suggest new and unfamiliar ways of thinking about this most familiar of works, and who ask us to consider the enduring appeal of "Crusoe," more recognizable today than ever before.

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Reviews

"The richness and excellence of the contributions, along with the fresh interpretations of a three-hundred-year novel, prove - if proof was needed - the enduring and always renewed interest in this universal myth of Robinson Crusoe."
- Digital Defoe, Fall 2022

"Bucknell University Press is to be commended for putting out two excellent volumes to coincide with the recent tricentenary. Taken together, [Rewriting Crusoe and Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years] offer an impressive range of scholarly approaches to Robinson Crusoe and its many imitators, and will prove to have great value to instructors, students, and researchers of this celebrated novel."
- Eighteenth-Century Studies, Winter 2023

"This is a well-conceived and executed examination of the staying power of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. The essays are all readable and relevant, well-documented, and often cross-referenced. The book makes a useful addition to any college library as well as a Defoe scholar's."
- Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, March 2022

"As Andreas K.E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley's excellent collection of essays celebrating Robinson Crusoe's 300th anniversary shows, Defoe's narrative has never stopped engaging readers and has worked its way into Anglo-American culture in a surprising variety of ways. Essays in the collection by eleven scholars, both established and emerging, demonstrate how this intriguing novel continues to generate fresh interpretive possibilities. This collection of essays is a 'must-have' for teaching and thinking about Defoe's most famous novel."
- Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, Fall 2021

"Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley have gathered a collection of excellent essays by eminent scholars on the continuing relevance and power after three hundred years of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Both informative and provocative, these essays provide an essential testimonial to the cultural and philosophical implications of Defoe's classic novel through those centuries into our own."
- John Richetti, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe

"This rich, wide-ranging volume brings into view the kinds of concerns and contexts that have informed the reception of Robinson Crusoe itself as well as countless remediations: gender, individualism, imperialism; pantomime, cinema, animal stories for children; more variously, Newton, tobacco, the sequel, and Crusoeian iconicity. This collection is valuable both for its deepening contribution to Defoe studies and its broadening relevance to a larger conversation about the genres of the Robinsonade."
-Rivka Swenson, author of Essential Scots and the Idea of Unionism in Anglo-Scottish Literature, 1603-1832

About the editors:

Andreas K. E. Mueller is the author of A Critical Study of Daniel Defoe's Verse and numerous articles on eighteenth-century literature and culture, especially Daniel Defoe. He is a professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Glynis Ridley is the author of Clara's Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, and numerous articles on eighteenth-century literature and culture. She is a professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 9781684482870; PDF: $42.50, 9781684482900; EPUB: $42.50, 9781684482887