“I FOUND PEN, INK AND PAPER […] I KEPT THINGS VERY EXACT”. GENRENESS IN ROBINSON CRUSOE
“I FOUND PEN, INK AND PAPER […] I KEPT THINGS VERY EXACT”. GENRENESS IN ROBINSON CRUSOE

Summary/Abstract: “The Novel as readers now understand it did not really exist as a literary form in English during the late seventeenth century and the early decades of the eighteenth”, John Richetti (2017: 152) has recently pointed out. Prior to this, in 1957, Ian Watt conceptualised the “myth of modern individualism”. This paper focuses on Robinson Crusoe and the rise of the English novel, revisiting some key excerpts in order to propose a new approach to the new genre. Michael McKeon (2017: 67) postulated that “The novel crystallizes genreness, we might say, selfconsciously incorporating, as part of its form, the problem of its own categorical status”. This paper addresses the above proposal, examining the adventures of the eponymous voyager from York. In particular, it pays attention to the various means by which reality is recorded in his autobiographical account, as well as the numerous narrative forms through which the reader is presented with the events of Crusoe’s life.

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