ABSTRACT

Maria Edgeworth’s response to Robinson Crusoe has been characterized largely negatively, either with reference to the cautions expressed in Practical Education against the spirit of adventure and the encouragement of rash economic speculation, or the critique of primitivism along Crusoesque lines that is found in one of her Moral Tales, “Forester.” This essay revises the dominant view of Edgeworth’s response to Robinson Crusoe firstly by arguing that the characterization of Edgeworth as “anti-Crusoe” ignores the wide range of references to Defoe’s text in her work (in Manoeuvring, Belinda, and Ennui, for example). I argue secondly that an important strand of Edgeworth’s response to Crusoe is mediated through her critique of Rousseau, and specifically Rousseau’s scepticism as to the value of reading in children’s education. Edgeworth’s later references to Crusoe, in Patronage and the Sequel to Frank, constitute a rejection of Rousseau’s elevation of Robinson Crusoe as a uniquely privileged text, while at the same time acknowledging that “a desert island is a delightful place.”

摘要

玛丽亚·埃奇沃思（Maria Edgeworth）对鲁滨逊·克鲁索（Robinson Crusoe）的回应在很大程度上具有消极的特征，既可以参考《实践教育》中对冒险精神和鼓励轻率的经济投机行为的警告，也可以参考对克鲁索式的原始主义批评。道德故事，“福斯特”。本文首先论证了埃奇沃思对鲁滨逊·克鲁索的回应的主流观点，认为埃奇沃思被描述为“反克鲁索”，而忽略了迪福在其著作中的广泛引用（在机动，贝琳达和恩努伊中）。， 例如）。第二，我认为埃奇沃思对克鲁索的回应的一个重要方面是通过她对卢梭的批判，特别是卢梭对阅读在儿童教育中的价值的怀疑来进行的。埃奇沃思的后来引用克鲁索，在赞助和续集弗兰克，构成了拒绝卢梭的海拔鲁宾逊漂流记作为唯一特权文本，而在同一时间承认“一个荒岛是一个令人愉快的地方。”