Global Crusoe: Comparative Literature, Postcolonial Theory and Transnational Aesthetics

TLDR: Fallon's Global Crusoe as mentioned in this paper is a study of the role of the figure of Robinson Crusoe in the context of transnationalism and post-colonisation, focusing on a transnational map of literary influence and revision.

Abstract: Ann Marie Fallon, Global Crusoe: Comparative Literature, Postcolonial Theory and Transnational Aesthetics (Ashgate, 2011)Ann Marie Fallon's Global Crusoe offers valuable insight into Daniel Defoe's canonical text The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its twentieth-century revisions. Fallon uses feminist and postcolonial theories to read these texts in the context of transnationalism; the resulting study is an original and valuable addition both to Crusoe scholarship and to postcolonial criticism in general. Global Crusoe brings the discussion of Defoe's novel into the present day, proposing that 'we see Crusoe today ... as a cosmopolitan figure of connection and a representation of our own moment of anxiety around a rapidly globalizing world' (2). The figure of Crusoe continues to be relevant in contemporary times: updating the scholarship on this topic, as Fallon has done, is thus of paramount importance.Literary text and geographical/imagined space are closely intertwined throughout the study, with Fallon stating that she will 'demonstrate the ways that revising and unsettling these texts are intimately connected to revising and unsettling space' (17). This process creates, in Fallon's words, 'a transnational map of literary influence and revision' (17). Global Crusoe argues that these revisions present us with 'a new kind of transnational aesthetic' wherein 'the colonial Crusoe becomes the postcolonial Robbie Crusoe' and 'the uncharted island becomes the overly inscribed postmodern, postcolonial nation' (29). 'Home' is a key concept within this aesthetic: Fallon repeatedly returns to the term and seeks to display how her chosen texts engage with it and how it forms links between texts. 'What does it mean to be at home in the world?' is, Fallon explains, 'a basic question for Global Crusoe' (3). The book explores how characters and authors negotiate this question and how, in turn, our own attitudes and anxieties are embedded within these negotiations.Global Crusoe has seven chapters. The first of these extends on the theoretical groundwork covered in the text's introduction, with Fallon very diligently providing the reader with a range of definitions for key terms as well as clarifying her own intended use of these terms. The second chapter offers an analysis of Fallon's foundational text - Defoe's Robinson Crusoe - in relation to 'revision' and 'dislocation' within the text itself. The next four chapters discuss twentieth-century revisions of this urtext and are structured around specific titles: Derek Walcott's play Pantomime (1978) and Sam Selvon's novel Moses Ascending (1975); J.M. Coetzee's novel Foe (1986), Nadine Gordimer's short story 'Friday's Footprint' (1960), and Bessie Head's short story 'The Wind and a Boy' (1977); Marianne Wiggins' novel John Dollar (1989); and Victoria Slavuski's novel Musica para olvidar una isla (1993). A range of other narratives are also discussed throughout these chapters, most notably Defoe's The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1920), Elizabeth Bishop's poem 'Crusoe in England' (1979), and the film Cast Away (2000). …