(non)human islands: Environmental critical responses to contemporary Robinsonades

Bell, Liam Joseph 2023. (non)human islands: Environmental critical responses to contemporary Robinsonades. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) has inspired numerous adaptations, reiterations, and, more recently, radical revisions. My work investigates post-1945 contemporary Robinsonades that critique, challenge, and present alternatives to the conventions of Defoe’s canonical text. The re-visions I focus on in this thesis are as follows; William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory (1984), Michel Tournier’s Friday, or the Other Island (1967), J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island (1974), and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy (2003 – 2013). Although these re-visions present radical alternatives and severe critiques of the conventional Robinsonade, the novels in question still narrate attempts to humanise the island itself. My thesis explores the possible limits of this engagement with nonhuman spaces, a line of questioning that is echoed in the title of thesis —(non)human islands. The ideology expounded by Robinson Crusoe is still observable in our current practices in the Anthropocene, particularly in the Western world, where we are failing to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism, Anglocentrism, exploitation of subjugated people, the exploitation of other animals and environments, and the anthropocentric rule reinforced through ‘Man vs Nature’ binaries. Contemporary re-visions of the Robinsonade overturn the sovereign rule of (what I have termed) the Crusoe-figure through their engagement and subversion of Defoe’s colonial and capitalist narrative. The narrative of solitary ownership of the fantasy island kingdom is parodied and satirised but Robinsonade revisions also demonstrate that the severance a castaway suffers in the shipwreck presents a unique opportunity to reinvent our relationship to world without being burdened by societal constraint. My project is located in the emerging interdisciplinary field of environmental criticism (also referred to as ecotheory and ecocriticism). I examine selected contemporary re-visions of the Robinsonade to explore our relationships with the nonhuman world and the conditions we face in the Anthropocene.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	25 October 2023
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2024 01:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/163502

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