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Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850)
When The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe first published in 1719, Defoe could not have imagined that his protagonist would enjoy global recognition 300 years later. With no shortage of explanations for its longevity, Defoe’s tour de force has been interpreted as both religious allegory and frontier myth, its hero viewed variously as 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 more to say—the Crusoe myth is far from spent. The contributors to this wide-ranging collection suggest new and unfamiliar ways of thinking about this most familiar of works, asking us to consider the enduring appeal of “Crusoe", more recognizable today than ever before.