Daniel Defoe as Character: Subversion of the Myths of Robinson Crusoe and of the Author

Competing Models of Socially Constructed Economic Man: Differentiating Defoe's Crusoe from the Robinson of Neoclassical Economics

Abstract: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has seldom been read as an explicitly political text When it has, it appears that the central character was designed to warn the early eighteenth-century reader against political challenges to the existing economic order Insofar as Defoe's Crusoe stands for ‘economic man’, he is a reflection of historically produced assumptions about the need for social conformity, not the embodiment of any genuinely essential economic characteristics This insight is used to compare Defoe's conception of economic man with that of the neoclassical Robinson Crusoe economy On the most important of the ostensibly generic principles espoused by neoclassical theorists, their ‘Robinson’ has no parallels with Defoe's Crusoe Despite the shared name, two quite distinct social constructions serve two equally distinct pedagogical purposes Defoe's Crusoe extols the virtues of passive middle-class sobriety for effective social organisation; the neoclassical Robinson champions the establishment of ma

Shipwrecked: Disaster and Transformation in Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, and the Modern World

Abstract: Shipwrecked: Disaster and Transformation in Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe and the Modern World presents the first comparative study of notable literary shipwrecks from the past 4,000 years, focusing on Homer's Odyssey , Shakespeare's The Tempest , and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe . The recurrent treatment of shipwrecks in epic poetry, drama, novels, science fiction, movies, and television demonstrates an enduring fascination with this archetypal scene: a shipwreck survivor confronting the elements. It is remarkable, for example, that the characters in the 2004 television show Lost share so many features with those from Homer's Odyssey and Shakespeare's The Tempest . When survivors are stuck on an island for some period of time, shipwrecks often present the survivor with the possibility of a change in political and social status--as well as romance and even paradise. In each of the major shipwreck narratives examined, the poet or novelist links the castaways' arrival on a new shore with the possibility of a new sort of life. James V. Morrison also considers the historical context as well as the "triggers" (such as the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck) that inspired some of these works, and modern responses such as novels (Golding's Lord of the Flies, Coetzee's Foe , and Gordon's First on Mars , a science fiction version of the Crusoe story), movies, television ( Forbidden Planet, Cast Away, and Lost ), and the poetry and plays of Caribbean poets Derek Walcott and Aime Cesaire.

Rousseau’s Crusoe myth: the unlikely provenance of the neoclassical homo economicus

Abstract: The neoclassical homo economicus has escaped the narrow confines of economic theory and is today embodied countless times over in the everyday behaviour that so much of the modern economy is set up precisely to serve. Not all of the authors of leading books on economic principles have named the neoclassical homo economicus, but when they have done so it is overwhelmingly in the same way. They have given him the human form of a Robinson Crusoe figure, despite the fact that his behavioural motivations and his practical conduct owe next-to-nothing to Daniel Defoe’s original characterisation. I suggest that the route to today’s cultural familiarity with the neoclassical homo economicus instead passes through the entirely unwitting hands of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He substituted Defoe’s account of the castaway’s continuing deference to prevailing social norms with his own idealised vision of how the individual might use solitude to escape the corrupting influences of modern society. It is altogether ano...