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Article: All aboard the ark of possibility; or Robinson Crusoe returns from Mars as a small-footprint, multi-channel indeterminacy machine. (fictional character of English novelist Daniel Defoe)(Making Genre: Studies in the Novel or Something Like It, 1684-1762)
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the thirty-two years between the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe generated two characterizations, one comic-parodic and one serious-academic: first, that of the rollicking and faintly comical children's story; second, that of the leading candidate for the first genuine "novel" in English literature. The first characterization underwrote such burlesque, ironic, humorous, or otherwise displaced recastings as the Disney film Robinson Crusoe on Mars (featuring Dick van Dyke as an astronaut stranded on Mars, where he experiences numerous funny misadventures); the perennially popular comic television serial Gilligan's ...