I’ve been thinking over the past few days about Robinson Crusoe, Mariner. We’ll be busy next week with the NY Public Library & Dr. Lubey’s work, but esp. since she’s one of our resident Defoe experts, we might want to expand this conversation.
Matt P., our roving seminar member who’s spent the last two weeks in China, has started his project by thinking about the similarities between Prospero’s exile and Crusoe’s: both Europeans on isolated islands who survive, enslave non-Europeans, and appear, perhaps in slightly different ways, to represent fantasies about the colonial experience.
There’s lots to chew on in that parallel, but I also thought I’d share some recent material on Defoe that I put together this summer at the Folger. Here are links to a web site based on his comprehensive world history, the Atlas Maritimus of 1728, to a map of his maritime travels that was published in Part II of his story, and to two audio clips. (The first is recorded by my brother-in-law, Maury Sterling, last seen in the cast of “The A-Team” this summer.)
Map of Robinson Crusoe’s Travels
Enjoy!
Perhaps, I have the blinders on because of my own interest in the notion of utopia/dystopia, but after reading Defoe’s Moll Flanders and now The Tempest and being familiar with (though never actually having read) the story of Robinson Crusoe, is it possible that these stories riff off of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, published initially in 1516?
There is a sense of satire in the conversation between the colonist and the utopia-member, as they talk about law, culture, etc. The colonizer wants to believe his own culture superior, while at the same time, noting the pleasantries of those he attempts to colonize. It’s almost as if the European is watching a pet perform tricks. He wants to pet them, give them treats, tell them job well down, but would never want to be like the animal. Utopia like The Tempest immediately exposes the conflict between imperialism and perfect harmony.
…and by “job well down,” I mean “job well done.”