From Robinson to Robinsonaden. Myth and childhood metaphors

Abstract

The article considers the Robinson Crusoe's myth as the founder of the modern novel that, during the nineteenth century, emerged as a strategic reading within a project of acculturation of the middle-class childhood. In order to understand the extraordinary and long-lasting appeal that the work still has on the young readers, in its various adaptations and rewritings, it is necessary not only to illustrate the fascination related to the pleasure of adventure, discovery and primitive contact with the land, but also to explore the powerful metaphors of childhood and growth that the novel communicates, remaining strongly impressed in the childhood imagination today as in the past.