Robinson Crusoe: the fate of the British Ulysses

If travel has been one of the leitmotifs of Western imagination, Robinson Crusoe has certainly been one of its foremost incarnations. This British Ulysses foretold the global village, but also its problems. He predicted the end of distance, but also the triumph of isolation and anaesthetized loneliness. This paper provides an overview of the connections between Defoe's narrative and the new science and explores two versions of the story by two contemporary writers, Julio Cortazar and John Maxwell Coetzee.