Este estudo propõe uma leitura do século 21 de Robinson Crusoe, do escritor inglês Daniel Defoe, buscando identificar as razões que fazem a história do náufrago que vive numa ilha deserta por 28 anos permanecer excepcionalmente popular no mundo ocidental por três séculos. A leitura é um exercício prático do pensamento complexo, que constitui um dos três pilares da transdisciplinaridade, definido pelo pensador francês Edgar Morin. Esse enfoque consiste na identificação de padrões e inter-relações entre elementos internos do texto e externos a ele. O pensamento complexo conecta o conhecimento empírico/lógico/racional à sabedoria simbólica/mitológica/mágica. O estudo tem início com um retrospecto da carreira de Robinson Crusoe, considerando os textos fundadores que podem ter influenciado sua criação, e os inúmeros textos imitativos que se seguiram à sua publicação, originando um subgênero literário, das Robinsonadas. Uma síntese da biografia de Defoe ilustra o cenário de um mundo europeu de mudanças científicas, políticas e sociais radicais. O contexto e a fortuna crítica do autor são colocados lado a lado com a contribuição de estudos de filosofia da ciência, psicologia analítica, mitologia, antropologia e religião, na investigação do imaginário inscrito no romance. O capítulo quatro apresenta minha leitura transdisciplinar de Robinson Crusoe, destinada a demonstrar que a popularidade duradoura do romance é devida a seu poder de transmitir significados velados, conectados com elementos constitutivos do imaginário do mundo ocidental. / This study proposes a twenty-first-century reading of Robinson Crusoe, by British writer Daniel Defoe, aiming to identify the reasons why the story of the castaway who lives on an uninhabited island for 28 years has remained remarkably popular in the Western world for almost three centuries. The reading is a drill on Complex Thinking, as defined by French epistemologist Edgar Morin, one of the pillars of Transdisciplinarity. This approach consists of the identification of patterns and interrelationships among elements inside the text and elements external to it, in the light of a number of disciplines involved in the study. Complex Thinking connects empirical/logical/rational knowledge to symbolic/mythological/magical wisdom. The study starts with a review of the career of the book, considering the founding texts which might have influenced the creation of Robinson Crusoe, and the myriad of mimetic texts that followed its publication, giving birth to a literary subgenre, the Robinsonade. A glance at the life of Defoe is also offered, so as to illustrate the context of a European world of radical scientific, political and social changes. Contexts and the critical heritage of the work are put together with symbolic data that prove relevant for the research on the imaginary inscribed in the novel. Chapter three acknowledges the aid of a number of studies in the fields of philosophy of science, analytical psychology, mythology, anthropology and religion, which enabled me to interrelate diverse levels of reading. Chapter four offers my transdisciplinary reading of Robinson Crusoe, in which I endeavor to demonstrate that the continued popularity of the novel derives from its capacity to convey concealed meanings connected with elements constitutive of the Imaginary of the Western world.

xvii, 417 p. : ill., maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / In the postwar era, early modern or Edo period (1600-1868) Japan has most often been represented as a culture in isolation due to ostensibly draconian Bakufu regime policies that promised death to any one returning from abroad ( sakokuron , or the "Closed-Country" theory). While historians of Japan acknowledge limited contact with Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Ryukyuans, the two hundred and sixty-some years of the Edo Period has consistently been interpreted as a time in which an indigenous Japanese culture developed and flourished without the corrupting influence of extensive foreign contact. This project takes as its subject the stories of thousands of Japanese fisherman and sailors who became distressed at sea ( hyôryûmin ) and subsequently drifted throughout the Pacific before being rescued and repatriated by foreigners during the late 18 th and 19 th centuries. The hundreds of narratives that comprise this textual category of early modern hyôryûki or "castaway narratives" served as the primary means of representing encounters with foreigners in and around the Pacific region and, in turn projecting an emerging Japanese national consciousness. The origins of these hyôryûki are tied to the earlier establishment of diplomatic protocol for handling repatriated castaways primarily within an East Asian context and the kuchigaki ("oral testimonial") narrative records that resulted from interrogations of the repatriated subjects by both bakufu and domain officials. Late Edo castaways also had their stories of drift recorded in kuchigaki form, however with the encroachment of first Russian, and later English, American, and other western ships in the waters off the coast of Japan in the late Edo period (post-1780) other hyôryûki forms--both scholarly and popular--came to proliferate, as it became imperative to translate and re-imagine geopolitical developments in the greater Pacific. This dissertation not only uncovers a diverse textual and cultural category of hyôryûki , but also the complicated interrelationship between cultural production and concrete territorial and political concerns of the State. In so doing, it not only challenges traditional historiography of early modern Japan, but also reclaims a certain cultural specificity for the late Edo Japanese hyôryûki , contextualizing these texts within a more global process of colonization and modern Nation-State formation. / Committee in charge: Stephen Kohl, Chairperson, East Asian Languages & Literature; Alisa Freedman, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Maram Epstein, Member, East Asian Languages & Literature; Jeffrey Hanes, Outside Member, History

Este estudo propõe uma leitura do século 21 de Robinson Crusoe, do escritor inglês Daniel Defoe, buscando identificar as razões que fazem a história do náufrago que vive numa ilha deserta por 28 anos permanecer excepcionalmente popular no mundo ocidental por três séculos. A leitura é um exercício prático do pensamento complexo, que constitui um dos três pilares da transdisciplinaridade, definido pelo pensador francês Edgar Morin. Esse enfoque consiste na identificação de padrões e inter-relações entre elementos internos do texto e externos a ele. O pensamento complexo conecta o conhecimento empírico/lógico/racional à sabedoria simbólica/mitológica/mágica. O estudo tem início com um retrospecto da carreira de Robinson Crusoe, considerando os textos fundadores que podem ter influenciado sua criação, e os inúmeros textos imitativos que se seguiram à sua publicação, originando um subgênero literário, das Robinsonadas. Uma síntese da biografia de Defoe ilustra o cenário de um mundo europeu de mudanças científicas, políticas e sociais radicais. O contexto e a fortuna crítica do autor são colocados lado a lado com a contribuição de estudos de filosofia da ciência, psicologia analítica, mitologia, antropologia e religião, na investigação do imaginário inscrito no romance. O capítulo quatro apresenta minha leitura transdisciplinar de Robinson Crusoe, destinada a demonstrar que a popularidade duradoura do romance é devida a seu poder de transmitir significados velados, conectados com elementos constitutivos do imaginário do mundo ocidental. / This study proposes a twenty-first-century reading of Robinson Crusoe, by British writer Daniel Defoe, aiming to identify the reasons why the story of the castaway who lives on an uninhabited island for 28 years has remained remarkably popular in the Western world for almost three centuries. The reading is a drill on Complex Thinking, as defined by French epistemologist Edgar Morin, one of the pillars of Transdisciplinarity. This approach consists of the identification of patterns and interrelationships among elements inside the text and elements external to it, in the light of a number of disciplines involved in the study. Complex Thinking connects empirical/logical/rational knowledge to symbolic/mythological/magical wisdom. The study starts with a review of the career of the book, considering the founding texts which might have influenced the creation of Robinson Crusoe, and the myriad of mimetic texts that followed its publication, giving birth to a literary subgenre, the Robinsonade. A glance at the life of Defoe is also offered, so as to illustrate the context of a European world of radical scientific, political and social changes. Contexts and the critical heritage of the work are put together with symbolic data that prove relevant for the research on the imaginary inscribed in the novel. Chapter three acknowledges the aid of a number of studies in the fields of philosophy of science, analytical psychology, mythology, anthropology and religion, which enabled me to interrelate diverse levels of reading. Chapter four offers my transdisciplinary reading of Robinson Crusoe, in which I endeavor to demonstrate that the continued popularity of the novel derives from its capacity to convey concealed meanings connected with elements constitutive of the Imaginary of the Western world.

Este estudo propõe uma leitura do século 21 de Robinson Crusoe, do escritor inglês Daniel Defoe, buscando identificar as razões que fazem a história do náufrago que vive numa ilha deserta por 28 anos permanecer excepcionalmente popular no mundo ocidental por três séculos. A leitura é um exercício prático do pensamento complexo, que constitui um dos três pilares da transdisciplinaridade, definido pelo pensador francês Edgar Morin. Esse enfoque consiste na identificação de padrões e inter-relações entre elementos internos do texto e externos a ele. O pensamento complexo conecta o conhecimento empírico/lógico/racional à sabedoria simbólica/mitológica/mágica. O estudo tem início com um retrospecto da carreira de Robinson Crusoe, considerando os textos fundadores que podem ter influenciado sua criação, e os inúmeros textos imitativos que se seguiram à sua publicação, originando um subgênero literário, das Robinsonadas. Uma síntese da biografia de Defoe ilustra o cenário de um mundo europeu de mudanças científicas, políticas e sociais radicais. O contexto e a fortuna crítica do autor são colocados lado a lado com a contribuição de estudos de filosofia da ciência, psicologia analítica, mitologia, antropologia e religião, na investigação do imaginário inscrito no romance. O capítulo quatro apresenta minha leitura transdisciplinar de Robinson Crusoe, destinada a demonstrar que a popularidade duradoura do romance é devida a seu poder de transmitir significados velados, conectados com elementos constitutivos do imaginário do mundo ocidental. / This study proposes a twenty-first-century reading of Robinson Crusoe, by British writer Daniel Defoe, aiming to identify the reasons why the story of the castaway who lives on an uninhabited island for 28 years has remained remarkably popular in the Western world for almost three centuries. The reading is a drill on Complex Thinking, as defined by French epistemologist Edgar Morin, one of the pillars of Transdisciplinarity. This approach consists of the identification of patterns and interrelationships among elements inside the text and elements external to it, in the light of a number of disciplines involved in the study. Complex Thinking connects empirical/logical/rational knowledge to symbolic/mythological/magical wisdom. The study starts with a review of the career of the book, considering the founding texts which might have influenced the creation of Robinson Crusoe, and the myriad of mimetic texts that followed its publication, giving birth to a literary subgenre, the Robinsonade. A glance at the life of Defoe is also offered, so as to illustrate the context of a European world of radical scientific, political and social changes. Contexts and the critical heritage of the work are put together with symbolic data that prove relevant for the research on the imaginary inscribed in the novel. Chapter three acknowledges the aid of a number of studies in the fields of philosophy of science, analytical psychology, mythology, anthropology and religion, which enabled me to interrelate diverse levels of reading. Chapter four offers my transdisciplinary reading of Robinson Crusoe, in which I endeavor to demonstrate that the continued popularity of the novel derives from its capacity to convey concealed meanings connected with elements constitutive of the Imaginary of the Western world.

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Generic transformation of the castaway novel is made evident by the various ways in which the narrative boundaries that separate fiction from reality and history, the past from the present, and the rational from the irrational, are reconfigured in Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2002). The dissolution of boundaries reflects the dominant shift that has occurred in the castaway novel from the 18th century literary context to the present postmodern, postcolonial context. In this regard, the narrative utilizes various narratological strategies, the most significant being intertextuality, metafiction, historiographical metafiction, allegory, irony, and the carnivalesque. These narratological strategies rewrite, revise, and recontextualize those generic conventions that perpetuated the culture of masculinity and conquest that defines colonialism and the traditional castaway novel epitomized by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). From a postcolonial perspective, the castaway’s state of being reflects on the condition of the colonized as well as the colonizer: his/her experience of displacement is similar to colonized peoples’ separation from their cultural, spiritual and personal identities; simultaneously, processes of appropriation, adaptation and control of space resemble colonization, thereby revealing the constructed nature of colonial space. As such, space is fundamental to individual orientation and social adaptation and consequently, metaphorically and metonymically linked to identity. In the selected postmodernist and postcolonial texts, the movement from the position of castaway to colonist as originally manifested in Robinson Crusoe is therefore reinterpreted and recontextualized. The postmodernist and postcolonial contexts resist fixed and one-dimensional representations of identity, as well as the appropriation and domination of space, that characterize shipwreck literature from pre-colonial and colonial periods. Rationalist notions of history, reality and truth as empirically definable concepts are also contested. The castaway identity is often characterized by feelings of physical and spiritual displacement and estrangement that can be paralleled to postmodernist themes of existential confusion and anxiety. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013