摘要：My starting point in this paper comes from being intrigued by an absence. It was while I was pursuingresearch into what might be called the postcolonial novel in French and not surprisingly therefore I wasinterested in Robinson Crusoe and what had been done with this literary myth by the contemporaryFrench author Michel Tournier, whose first published novel was entitled Vendredi ou les limbes duPacifique. I was also, as anyone venturing into this domain must, considering what Ian Watt had to sayboth more than 40 years ago on the rise of the novel and more recently on Myths of ModernIndividualism. The four great figures evoked by Watt in this latter work are Faust, Don Quixote, DonJuan and Robinson Crusoe and while he sees the birth of the first three as occurring during the Counter-Reformation, with the fourth immediately following, tellingly he emphasises the importance of thenineteenth century in their evolution:"With the increasing dominance of the new individualism, the punitive elements in the Counter-Reformation plots were removed; and a more symbolic, indeed transcendental, view of the mythschanged the way all four characters were understood. In the nineteenth century all four spreadacross the Western world and thus attained a universal and international status." (Op. Cit. Xv)
