Children's Literature Popular Culture And Robinson Crusoe

This study of the long and varied afterlife of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, primarily in the overlapping arenas of children's and popular culture, offers new insights into not only the continued popularity and relevance of Crusoe's story, but into how modern conceptions of childhood have been shaped by nostalgia and by ideas of 'the popular.' Because it enjoyed such tremendous success as a pedagogical work for children and as a source for children's and popular entertainments, Robinson Crusoe provides a unique case study in the development of our ideas of childhood and the points of intersection between children's and popular cultures.

Drawing on a wide range of adaptations and remediations, including children's abridgements, print 'robinsonades,' chapbooks, popular songs, pantomimes, toys, games, and various consumer items, this book offers a fresh consideration of the place Crusoe has occupied in our culture for almost three centuries.

Review: 'This is a beautifully researched and intricately thought-out work of scholarship, whose apparently modest scope is deceptive, since the book ultimately pushes towards a far-reaching and provocative conclusion: that Robinson Crusoe, by heralding the future 'as modernity' and evoking the past 'as nostalgia', performs 'the kind of fundamentally contradictory cultural work into whose service the idea of childhood itself has been called for at least the last two centuries'' - Louise Joy, University of Cambridge, UK 'O'Malley's recognition of Robinson Crusoe as an enduring media event will, one hopes, spur other scholars to revisit the history ofthis western classic and consider that Crusoe's legacy may not be built upon the power of Defoe's prose or narration, but rather on derivatives and adaptations that were frequently revised to reflect the ideas and values of a rapidly evolving society.' - Jordan Howell, University of Delaware, USA 'Weaving together social history, textual analysis, impressive archival research, and lucid theoretical argument, Children's Literature, Popular Culture, and Robinson Crusoe is a tour de force of scholarship.' - Susan Naramore Maher, Children's Literature Association Quarterly 'O'Malley's study is interesting, insightful, and enjoyable.' - The Year's Work in English Studies