Robinsonade

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The term robinsonade denotes literature, films and other art forms that deal with the literary motif of involuntary isolation on an island or in a remote area; note the difference to the positively illuminated idyll or utopia , even if the categories can overlap. The term is based on the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe , published in 1719 , but the motif winds its way through the entire world literature , both before and after the novel was published . Traits of the Robinsonade can be found not only in the succession of Defoe, but z. B. also in the Odyssey and other ancient myths, in Tasso ( Aminta ), Harsdörffer ( The Shipwreck ) and Miguel Sánchez ( La isla bárbara ), as well as Yann Martel ( Life of Pi ).

Robinson Crusoe - the template

The novel poses questions of moral philosophy and basically deals with the conflict between nature and culture, naturalness and civilization , the individual and society. The castaway Robinson has to try to survive on a supposedly lonely island. He succeeds in recovering the remains of the wreck that has not yet gone under and thus creating a livelihood: clothes, tools, weapons. It is also about keeping oneself away from being “brutalized”, far from any civilization. Still, a lot of arduous work is necessary to ensure its survival; Numerous cultural techniques - agriculture, carpentry, tailoring, etc. - he has to learn. He starts a diary and uses the Bible , which has also been rescued from the wreck, as a guide for his thoughts and actions; so he changes from easy-going cosmopolitan to good Christian. The native, whom he can save from cannibals - he calls him Friday after the day of the week they first meet - he trains to be a good servant and Christian. Later, the crew of a passing ship saves him from death and he is brought back to the old world as a new person.

historical development

The original quickly resulted in numerous imitations. Shipwrecked accounts that appeared prior to Defoe's work have been converted to robinsonades by the publishers. François Leguat's journeys to two uninhabited East Indian islands , published in 1708 , became The French Robinson in 1723 . Henrik Smeeks Beschryvinge van het megtig Koningryk Krinke Kesmes (1708) became the Dutch Robinson Heinrich Texel in 1721 . Of the numerous robinsonades of the 18th century, however, only two worked beyond their time. One is Johann Gottfried Schnabel's miraculous fata of some seafarers , which was reissued in 1828 in an adaptation by Ludwig Tieck under the title Die Insel Felsenburg . The other is Robinson the Younger , a work by Joachim Heinrich Campe published in 1779/80 . This rather dry work, written in dialogue form, became one of the favorite books of the 18th century and had 119 editions by 1897.

In the 19th century, the number of robinsonades gradually decreased. The best known is probably Johann David Wyss ' Der Schweizerischer Robinson or the Shipwrecked Swiss Preacher and his Family , written down between 1794 and 1798, published from 1812 onwards. This Robinsonade was in turn continued: Frederick Marryat's Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific (1841; German mostly under the title Sigismund Rüstig ) also arose out of Marryat's annoyance about factual inaccuracies in Wyss' book. In France, Adrien Paul published a Wyss sequel under the title: Le pilote Willis, pour faire suite au Robinson Suisse (1855; German as Willis the helmsman 1859). Jules Verne was later encouraged to write a sequel to Wyss' novel ( Seconde Patrie , 1900, German The Second Fatherland ) and wrote other robinsonads such as L'Île mystérieuse ( The mysterious island ) (1875), L'Oncle Robinson ( Uncle Robinson ) (posthumously 1991) and the cheerful Robinsonade parody L'École des Robinsons ( The School of the Robinsons ) (1882).

In the 20th century, only a few classic Robinsonads were published, including Otto Felsing's Professor Robinson (1906), Michel Tournier's Friday or Im Schoss des Pazifik (1968) and Hilfe! A Robinsonade by Theodore Taylor (1973).

Connection of the island novel with the utopia motif and other variants

Ibn Tufail's theological-philosophical work The Living, Son of the Watcher (Arabic: Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān ) can be regarded as a forerunner of the Robinson novel .

Robinsonades are often linked with utopian elements; the means of isolation creates the credible prerequisite for the creation of new forms of society. An example of this is Die Insel Felsenburg by Johann Gottfried Schnabel (1731) - one of the first Robinsonads published in Germany - in which the Robinson motif of the stranded seafarer is combined with the classic Utopia motif.

L'Île mysterieuse ( The Mysterious Island ) by Jules Verne (1874/75) varies the motif in the sense of a completely progressive, optimistic thought pattern. The small group of men who, after escaping from internment during the American Civil War , are thrown in their balloon on a Pacific island, make use of nature, encounter difficulties with technology and build a real civilization, smelt iron ore, manufacture explosives, build a seaworthy sailing ship etc. While captain Nemo goes undetected to them as Deus ex machina , the main characters also show themselves to be representatives of the technically advanced western world of the 19th century who are thoroughly convinced that the Christian values ​​are the measure of all things in a positive sense.

The opposite - a dystopia based on science and technology - described HG Wells in his novel The Island of Dr. Moreau ( Die Insel des Dr. Moreau ) (1896), where the shipwrecked man finds himself in the company of a scientific outsider who wants to humanize animals by means of vivisection and whose earlier "attempts", which he regards as unsuccessful, populate the lonely island. Only with difficulty kept under control by their human masters, the shipwrecked man finally experiences the complete disintegration of the imposed culture of this animal people after the death of the scientist.

Even William Golding used the Robinson motif to dystopian purposes, but without fantastic elements: In Lord of the Flies ( Lord of the Flies ) (1954), he describes the rapid civilizational and ethical decline of a group of boarders who underwent after a disaster on see remote island in isolation. Instead of developing into a better Christian person after enduring suffering and hard work with the Bible as a guide to becoming a better Christian, like Robinson, who has left alone for himself, group dynamic processes begin here ; Without the external compulsion from institutions and leading figures, which precisely determined boarding school life at that time, the plaster of civilization quickly crumbles and primitive behaviors break out unmasked. The process is accelerated even further by Robinson-typical problems (obtaining food and shelter, ignorance of basic civilization techniques such as starting a fire and the - based on a misunderstanding - feared presence of a mysterious, terrifying being).

Modernized robinsonades

The traditional Robinsonade takes place on a remote island, which creates the conditions for isolation from the rest of humanity through the vastness of the ocean. Was this still a viable option at the beginning of the 20th century - see e.g. B. the German South Sea Robinson Club Piraths Insel by Norbert Jacques , which focuses on the problem of colonization and the oppression and extermination of peoples under colonial rule, combined in turn with the creation of a utopian island society - with increasing technical progress the usefulness of the deserted, remote island as a means of permanent isolation.

The evolving futuristic literature , which replaced the island with unknown planets and the classic shipwreck caused by the " interstellar disaster " , offered alternative options . Another possibility is the isolation in time by means of fictitious time travel devices . Arno Schmidt, on the other hand, took the opposite path, so to speak: in Schwarze Spiegel he isolates the protagonist from human society by declaring him to be the last survivor of a nuclear war . Here the lines between Robinsonade and dystopia become blurred.

Another variant, for example the trilogy Die Höhlenkinder (1918–20), leaves the protagonists stranded not on an island but in a remote area, where they then have to fight for their existence by rediscovering primitive survival techniques. So the characters effectively take a journey into the past. Under these circumstances, children and young people are popular as protagonists, whose adventures they portray then visualize the lives of “cavemen”.

Similar to AS Neill in The Green Cloud, a group of children, Herbert Rosendorfer in Great Solo for Anton (1976) does not even take the protagonist away from his hometown, but makes all other people disappear under unexplained circumstances, while the rest of the environment remains unchanged . This does not particularly worry the only remaining Anton; it settles down in the gradually decaying civilized environment.

Trivialization and revival

As far as the original genre is concerned, a certain trivialization can be observed over time. Even the original novel was often degraded to an unpretentious children's book; Likewise, the Robinsonade was often reduced to the mere elements of adventure and the constituent components - shipwreck, island, isolation, survival. Numerous youth adaptations of the original novel, inspired by youth books and later adventure films, testify to this. Numerous trivialized film adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Robinson Family also only served the curiosity; Robinson cavorted in animated series and cartoons.

In the course of this process, the central elements and rules of the game of the Robinsonade were cemented so strongly in popular cultural awareness that in the 1970s at the latest, numerous parodies were inevitably raised and all other varieties of the genre were tried out. An example of this is the American sitcom Gilligan's Island ( Gilligan's Island , 1964 to 1967), where opinions have always been divided as to whether it is an extreme parody or simply silly.

After that, the Robinsonade burned out for a while. Similar to the Western , the return to the roots succeeded after a break: through serious film adaptations, such as B. Nicolas Roegs Castaway (also: Castaway - Die Insel ), here as a wanted state; and Robert Zemeckis ' Verschollen (orig .: Cast away ), less wanted than suffered, the genre was revived. Another modern robinsonad is the American television series Lost , which is obviously heavily inspired by William Golding's Lord of the Flies - there is even a mysterious monster.

The Robinsonad also plays a role in the cartoons and series. One episode of Bart and Lisa Simpson's school classes stranded on a desert island. Without adults, they are completely left to their own devices. The civilized behavior is quickly lost and a scenario similar to the novel Lord of the Flies also emerges . In the cartoon series Crash Canyon the motif is also taken up, only that the isolated people are locked in a huge crevice.

See also

Different word meaning

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

A robinsonade is also a word from the football language of the early 20th century and describes an arm overhead - diagonal or horizontal - jump by the goalkeeper into the distant half of his goal (so named after its "inventor" Jack Robinson ).

literature

  • Stefan Greif (Ed.): Robinsonades in the 20th century. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3261-6 .
  • Reinhard Stach: Robinson and Robinsonads in German-language literature. A bibliography. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1991 (= series of publications of the German Academy for Children's and Young People's Literature Volkach eV Volume 12) ISBN 3-88479-588-0 .
  • Reinhard Stach: Robinsonades. Bestsellers of youth literature. Schneider-Verlag Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 1996 (= series of publications of the German Academy for Children's and Youth Literature Volkach eV Volume 18) ISBN 3-87116-489-5 .
  • Marie-Hélène Weber: Robinson et robinsonnades. Etude comparée de "Robinson Crusoë" de Defoe, "Le Robinson suisse" de JR Wyss, "L'île mystérieuse" de J. Verne, "Sa Majesté des mouches" de W. Golding, "Vendredi ou Les limbres du Pacifique" de M. Tournier. Ed. Univ. du Sud, Toulouse 1993. ISBN 2-7227-0039-5 .
  • Ada Bieber, Stefan Greif, Günter Helmes (eds.): Washed up - updated. Robinsonades in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-3261-5 .
  • Heinrich Pleticha , Siegfried Augustin : Lexicon of adventure and travel literature from Africa to Winnetou. Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart / Vienna / Bern 1999, ISBN 3 522 60002 9 .
  • Erhard Reckwitz: The Robinsonade. Themes and forms of a literary genre. Grüner, Amsterdam 1976 (= Bochum English Studies. Volume 4), ISBN 90-6032-073-5 .

Web links

Commons : Robinsonade  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files