Robinsonade

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Andrew O'Malley (Ryerson University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Dates

Date of occurrence 1720-2007

Places

France (Location)
Germany (Location)
United Kingdom (Location)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Since its publication in 1719 Defoe's

Robinson Crusoe

has been adopted into the cultural imagination of all societies in the world. Indeed, the story of Robinson's solitary survival on his desert island has achieved the status of myth. Defoe's text has not only been endlessly reprinted (one count made in the 1990s puts the figure at well over 700 editions) and translated into virtually every written language, including those no one speaks, such as Esperanto and shorthand, and its story has been edited and revised into versions for almost every age and condition of childhood from baby-books to teenage-readers. A great number and vast array of texts imitating

Robinson Crusoe

have also been produced over almost three centuries; so many indeed that they have come to form their own…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2575 words

Citation: O'Malley, Andrew. "Robinsonade". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 March 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1717, accessed 18 April 2024.]

Save this article