Foreword: The Progressive Pedagogies of the Modern Robinsonade

[para. 1]: "Postcolonial critics (and before them James Joyce, who saw in Crusoe ‘the true symbol of British conquest’) have rightly made it impossible to study Robinson Crusoe without considering the colonial context of a European man’s conquest of an island and its neighbouring indigenous peoples. Likewise, the Robinsonade, the genre of island adventure fiction historically directed at young male readers that is Robinson Crusoe’s literary legacy, has long been implicated in both the imperialist project and in the promotion of decidedly masculine model of individualism."