Robinson Crusoe is an English novel. It belongs to the genre of adventure novel. Written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719. His publisher is W. Taylo. The story is inspired of the life of Alexander Selkirk. This novel is the first adventure novel written in English. When it was published, it was a huge success. Jean-Jacques Rousseau considers it as an educational novel. Shipwreck stories are as beautiful as literature because the eldest is Ulysses and the Odyssey (8th century BC).Today, it is considered as a classic novel in literature. The best known translation of Robinson Crusoe (by D. Defoe) in French is that written by Petrus Borel (poet and romantic frenetic writer) in the nineteenth century. A new version was released in 2011, translation of Françoise Du Sorbier. This novel has been adapted to cinema and television a lot of times. It is one written by Michel Fournier with Friday or the limbo of the Pacific. Since it releases, Defoe’s has not stopped creating new variations on the theme, or robinsonnades. It has become a myth. Robinson became a common name.
This novel is written in the first person singular. Robinson Crusoe is an adventurer in the soul. In the story that Robinson Crusoe tells in 1651, he led in England against the will of his parents who wanted him to be a lawyer. Robinson Crusoe navigates on the Pacific on the side of South America. His ship has suffered a storm and is stranded a stone’s throw from an island. He is the only survivor (with a dog). He joins the island and discovers that it is deserted. Robinson recovers a lot of equipment on the boat (like a rifle) and settles on the island and lives more than thirty years but after twenty five years he finds an Indian and names him Friday. Robinson tries to reproduce the way of life of the society where he is born, that is to say that he begins to practice agriculture and breeding while he could live by hunting and gathering. With his animals, he managed to recreate a micro society because he considers himself the king in the middle of his subjects. We understand that everything he does is a way of fighting loneliness and clinging to the life he led.
Robinson Crusoe’s story pleased me. I loved reading his adventures and how he was going to evolve. Last year, I studied four rewriting of Robinson Crusoe. It was very interesting to see the variants of this myth. I usually do not like to read adventure novels but here it did not bother me.
