Armstrong, Dianne. "The Myth of Cronus: Cannibal and Sign in Robinson Crusoe." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 4.3 (April 1992): 207-20. [Defoe's novel resonates at various mythical, archetypal levels to the ears of the modern reader. Its cannibalism suggests the myth of Cronus, who prevented the rebellion of his children by eating them. Crusoe, a rebellious child, usurps his father's role, in contrast to the loyal relation of Friday to his father. "Between the savages and Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe and the wolves, there are only degrees of devourment, revealed in the novel by the capacity of language to escape its denotative context" (270).]
Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1990. [Defoe's life is interesting, controversial, and murky. This biography sometimes sheds light on the murk and sometimes disappears into it. It is a copiously documented and recent full-scale biography and supplants that of Moore but is perhaps supplanted by that of Novak. (Backscheider and Novak initially planned a collaborative biography, but their research and opinions eventuated in separate works.) Its discussion of Robinson Crusoe considers the relation of its themes, especially its treatment of religion, to Defoe's characteristic ideas.]Blewett, David. Defoe's Art of Fiction: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. [Blewett's chapter on Robinson Crusoe, "The Island and the World," identifies the island and the world with the novel's "rhythm of imprisonment and deliverance" (28), and identifies interlocking themes and patterns in the novel.]
Dharwadker, Aparna. "Nation, Race, and the Ideology of Commerce in Defoe." The Eighteenth Century 39.1 (Spring 1998): 63-84. [Explores the ambiguous or paradoxical relations of mercantilism to nationality and trade to race. "The island is presented mainly as a benign microcosm of the nation and of European society, where the transformation of the native other also makes possible a reinvention of European identity."Earle, Peter. The World of Defoe. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1976. [Survey's Defoe's life and works in the context of the period. Good on the period but dubious in its evaluation of Defoe.]
Hopes, Jeffrey. "Real and Imaginary Stories: Robinson Crusoe and the Serious Reflections. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 8.3 (April 1996): 313-28. [Rather than being a collection of miscellaneous essays, Serious Reflections responds to misreadings of Robinson Crusoe. Hence in provides a template for interpreting the novel-as moral fable, as allegory, and as authentic narrative. It underlines the ways in which the relation of the controlling author to the interpreting reader parallels that of a providential God to a free-willed sinner.]
Kroll, Richard. "Defoe and Early Narrative." In The Columbia History of the British Novel, ed. John Richetti. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 23-49. [On Defoe in general rather than particular novels, but useful in the light it sheds on Robinson Crusoe. Sees Defoe as "engaged in a debate about the moral and cognitive relationship of prose narrative to the world (both the world it apparently describes and the world encountered by the reader)" (35), and pursues that debate in discussions of history and character in Defoe.]
Lund, Roger D., ed. Critical Essays on Daniel Defoe. New York: G. K. Hall, 1997. [Includes essays on Robinson Crusoe by J. A. Downie (Crusoe as adventurer, Defoe as imperialist), Manuel Schonhorn (Crusoe as warrior, priest, and farmer), and Leopold Damrosch, Jr. (Robinson Crusoe as "a remarkable and unrepeatable reconciliation of myth with the novel").]
Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. [Perhaps no biography of Defoe can be definitive, but Novak's is certainly the most important: thoroughly researched, detailed but effectively narrated, balanced in its judgments, it is the culmination of Novak's long career as a scholar of Defoe. The relatively brief discussion of Robinson Crusoe emphasizes its contexts and its relation to Defoe's other works.]
--. "Friday: or, the Power of Naming." In Augustan Studies: Essays in Honor of Martin C. Battestin, ed. Albert J. Rivero (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997) 110-22. [Examines "Crusoe's method of transforming his island world through the agency of language, and particularly his proclivity to create a world through a creative process of naming" (110). Naming creates the island and its material and is a form of dominance over Friday.
Richetti. John J. Daniel Defoe. Boston: Twayne, 1987. [An introductory survey of Defoe and his works. Robinson Crusoe is seen as a spiritual adventurer. Richetti's reading concentrates on the "interplay of subjective perception and the external world" and deftly balances various approaches.]
--. Defoe's Narratives: Situations and Structures. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. [Robinson Crusoe is both an embodiment of capitalist ideology and a seeker for spiritual self-definition. He is interesting because "he introduces private and common order into thrilling and uncommon events" (25), as Richetti's critical comments on the plot reveal.]
Rogers, Pat. Robinson Crusoe. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979. [An introduction that is particularly useful in providing background for various aspects of Robinson Crusoe: chapters on travel, trade, and empire; religion and allegory; social and philosophical themes; literary background; structures and style; and critical history. Includes accounts of Alexander Selkirk by Woodes Rogers (1712) and Richard Steele (1713).]
Schonhorn, Manuel. Defoe's Politics: Parliament, Powers, Kingship and Robinson Crusoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. [Sees Defoe's politics as conservative rather than modern. Traces the development of Defoe's political views and applies them to Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe uses the imagery of royalty throughout and, once he acquires subjects, insists on royal power: "Crusoe's rhetoric of absolutism and submission, of kingly authority and subject obedience, places the right and might of sovereignty in the office of the monarch" (152).
Seidel, Michael. Exile and the Narrative Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. [Robinson Crusoe shows the physical and psychological problems of exile but becomes almost an allegory of the exiled Stuarts and a commentary on such related topics as "sovereignty, property, natural law, and toleration."]
Stoler, John A. Daniel Defoe: An Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criticism, 1900-1980. New York: Garland, 1984. [An annotated bibliography of over 1500 items; useful, but one wishes the annotation were more informative. Supplemented by essays in Bulletin of Bibliography 53.1 (March 1996): 11-22, and 53.2 (June 1996): 125-37.]
Sutherland, James. Defoe. 1937; rpt. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1938. [Although supplanted by Backscheider's and Novak's more recent and detailed studies, Sutherland's biography remains a solid, well-written, and accessible study.]
Svilpis, Janis. "Bourgeois Solitude in Robinson Crusoe." English Studies in Canada 22.1 (March 1996): 35-43. Robinson's island as "the scene for the articulation of ideology that has clear similarities to the secular, (neo)classical myth of the Golden Age and the parallel Judeo-Christian myth of Eden" (37). Crusoe is an economic figure, but without fellow-workers; "and he, the integrated, spiritually cultured, skilled, and industrious economic man, imagined by capitalism, can be fully himself only when he is alone" (42).