An Island of Her Own: Heroines of the German Robinsonades from 1720 to 1800
1985; Wiley; Volume: 58; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/406037
ISSN1756-1183
Autores Tópico(s)German Literature and Culture Studies
ResumoRobinson Crusoe is a manly adventure. Defoe's seagoing Robinson, the son of the German immigrant Kreutznaer, spent his time riding the seas, heaving barrels of pitch, killing mutineers, and building forts. It has remained a man's world for most of the 260-year heritage of Robinson Crusoe imitations and variations. Critical scholarship has set up Robinson as the paradigm of bourgeois individualism: energy and initiative enable him to exploit and master new worlds, while exploring his own new inner growth. The wave of Robinsonades which directly followed Defoe's 1719 novel enhance the trend toward blood-and-guts domination of nature, natives, and Turks on the one hand, and toward boyish good fun on the other. Later in the eighteenth century, as the genre was overlaid with didacticism, it became acceptable literature for youth. In Germany, the very popular Robinson der Jiingere (1834) and the Karl May adventures grow out of these traditions. Yet, they, too, were boy's adventures. Women did not appear on Defoe's original isle, and the masculine bent of the story would seem to preclude a feminine variant. The expansion of European sea travel during the eighteenth century has, however, provided a copious body of songs, legends and historical reports of seafaring and soldiering women.' Frequently the plots have a young girl dress as a soldier or sailor in order to be with her love. The stories of such female adventurers were based to some extent on actual women who took to war, piracy, and seafaring. The legends and historical accounts describe young women who sneaked away from home disguised as men, working as soldiers and sailors on a secret quest of romance or adventure. Legendary heroines also made their way into the proto-novel: contrary to the findings of most scholars of the Robinsonade, there does indeed exist a corpus of female Robinsonades. Between 1720 and 1800 over sixteen female castaways appeared in German fiction, followed by at least three French, three Dutch, three British, and one American variation of the genre.2
Referência(s)