In closing, it seems worthwhile to point out that when American television has turned its attention to Robinson Crusoe, it has done so in important part by turning the story inside out. Survivor and Lost make the experience of being cast away into a story of a group stranded on an island together. That story cannot be about loneliness; nor is it particularly about either technique or race. Rather it becomes a story of renewal as the result of the experience on the island. In Lost, particularly, all of the major inhabitants have pasts that they regret (lives of crime, familial conflicts, drug addiction, crippling wealth), and the island seems to offer them all an opportunity to start their lives over again. On Survivor, too, the contestants are presented with the chance of achieving great wealth and as a result the ability to start a new life. These shows, again particularly Lost, suggest that life back home is the problem and that the island offers at least the possibility of a solution to that problem. The ‘‘castaways’’ in Lost and Survivor, one could argue, share with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe the possibility of transformation as a result of their ordeal, but, in a way that is not true of Defoe’s novel, the television shows also embody a critique of the society from which the islanders have come. Still, although different in crucial ways from Defoe’s story, these offerings of contemporary American television, like the films made over the last sixty years as well as the literary reimaginings published almost from the moment Robinson Crusoe appeared, all testify to the continuing adaptability and enduring power of Defoe’s novel.
—Robert Mayer
Selected Bibliography
Works by DANIEL DEFOE
An Essay upon Projects, 1697
The True-Born Englishman, 1701 Poem
The Shortest Way with Dissenters, 1702 Prose Satire
A Review of the Affairs of France; A Review of the State of the British Nation, 1704-13 Periodical
The True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal, 1706
The History of the Union of Great Britain, 1709 History
The Secret History of the October Club, 1711 Secret History
Robinson Crusoe, 1719 Novel
The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, 1720
The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, 1720 Novel
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders , 1722 Novel
The History and Remarkable Life of . . . Colonel Jacque, 1722 Novel
A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722 Novel
Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress, 1724 Novel
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-27
Selected Biography and Criticism
Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Caldwell, Tanya. ‘‘Sure Instinct: Incest, Politics, and Genre in Dryden and Defoe.’’ Genre XXXIII (Spring 2000): 27-50.
Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.
Mayer, Robert. Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
———. History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Moore, John Robert. Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe—Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
————. ‘‘Gender Cultural Criticism and the Rise of the Novel: The Case of Defoe.’’ Eighteenth-Century Fiction 12 (2-3) (January-April 2000): 239-51.
Richetti, John J. Defoe’s Narratives: Situations and Structures . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Rogers, Pat, ed. Daniel Defoe: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1998.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Starr, George A. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Sutherland, James R. Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
———. Defoe. Writers and Their Work, No. 51. London: Longmans, Green, 1965.
Swaminathan, Srividhya. ‘‘Defoe’s Alternative Conduct Manual.’’ Eighteenth-Century Fiction 15.2 (2003): 185- 206.
Vickers, Ilse. Defoe and the New Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
Zimmerman, Everett. Defoe and the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975.
1 A tropical fever.
2 Ensign; banner.
3 Grain.
4 Food; feed.
5 Perplexity; bewilderment.
6 Come suddenly.
7 Revealed; made known.
8 Did not fail.
9 Lack.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
(Series: # )
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