Robinson Crusoe – But on Mars: Investigating Intertextuality in Andy Weir’s The Martian (2014)
-
Ruprecht L. Tauchmann
Abstract
Since the publication of Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) a steady stream of adaptations reproduced, reimagined, and/or subverted key elements of the genre it set off. Charged with layers of discourse, “each age […] reveals the robinsonade that best fits its needs” (Fisher 2018. “Innovation and Imitation in the Eighteenth-Century Robinsonade.” In The Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe, edited by J. J. Richetti, 99–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 104). Consider, for example, Andy Weir’s science-fiction (sf) novel The Martian (2014) where a high degree of intertextuality to Defoe’s novel is juxtaposed with the absence of a native other. By treating The Martian as a deliberate revisitation of prior works (cf. Hutcheon 2006). I aim to investigate marked and unmarked intertextuality according to Sanders’s model of complex filtration of cultural narratives (2015). The Martian invites us to revisit Defoe’s novel as a site of cultural significance for the present-day concern of what it takes to sustain human life.
References
Albrecht-Crane, C., and D. R. Cutchins, eds. 2010. Adaptation Studies: New Approaches. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Blewett, D. 2018. “The Iconic Crusoe: Illustrations and Images of Robinson Crusoe.” In The Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe, edited by J. J. Richetti, 159–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781107338586.012Search in Google Scholar
Carroll, S. 2019. “Lost in Space: Surviving Globalization in Gravity and The Martian.” Science-Fiction Studies 46 (1): 127–42. https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2019.0024.Search in Google Scholar
Connolly, S. J., ed. 1999. The Oxford Companion to Irish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Defoe, D. 1863–64. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. With Upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin.Search in Google Scholar
Defoe, D. [1719] 1994. Robinson Crusoe: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism, edited by M. Shinagel, 2nd ed. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton.Search in Google Scholar
Deist, T. 2009. “Homo Homini Lupus: Zur Markierung von Intertextualität in William Goldings Gruppenrobinsonade Lord of the Flies.” In Angeschwemmt – Fortgeschrieben: Robinsonaden im 20. und beginnenden 21. Jahrhundert, edited by A. Bieber, S. Greif, and G. Helmes, 55–74. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.Search in Google Scholar
Fallon, A. M. 2011. Global Crusoe: Comparative Literature, Postcolonial Theory and Transnational Aesthetics. Farnham: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Fisher, C. 2018. “Innovation and Imitation in the Eighteenth-Century Robinsonade.” In The Cambridge Companion to Robinson Crusoe, edited by J. J. Richetti, 99–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781107338586.008Search in Google Scholar
Hall, S., ed. 2010. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Repr. London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Heise, U. K. 2008. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet. The Environmental Imagination of the Global. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335637.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Hutcheon, L. 2006. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203957721Search in Google Scholar
James, L. 1995. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. London: Abacus.Search in Google Scholar
Kinane, I. 2017. Theorising Literary Islands: The Island Trope in Contemporary Robinsonade Narratives. London, New York: Rowman & Littlefield International.Search in Google Scholar
Kinane, I. 2019. Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade: New Paradigms for Young Readers. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.10.3828/liverpool/9781789620047.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199256044.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Leitch, T. M. 2007. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone With the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Ljung, M. 2014. Swearing: A Cross-Cultural Linguistic Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar
Margulis, L. 1991. “Symbiogenesis and Symbionticism.” In Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis, edited by R. Fester and L. Margulis, 1–14. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mit Press Ltd.Search in Google Scholar
Marsden, J. I. 1991. The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Search in Google Scholar
Mayer, R. 2018. “Defoe’s Cultural Afterlive, Mainly on Screen.” In The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, edited by D. Cook and N. Seager, 233–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781107294424.012Search in Google Scholar
Moore, T. 2008. “Starvation in Victorian Christmas Fiction.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36 (2): 489–505. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1060150308080303.Search in Google Scholar
Morton, T. 2012. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Newell, K. 2010. “‘We’re off to See the Wizard’ (Again): Oz. Adaptations and the Matter of Fidelity.” In Adaptation Studies: New Approaches, edited by C. Albrecht-Crane, and D. R. Cutchins, 78–96. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Reiche, R. 2016. Strategien des Narrativen im kinematographischen Raum. Diss. München: Verlag Silke Schreiber.Search in Google Scholar
Sachs, J. 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/sach17314Search in Google Scholar
Sanders, J. 2015. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315737942Search in Google Scholar
Schneider, T. 2021. “The Holobiont Self: Understanding Immunity in Context.” History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (3): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00454-y.Search in Google Scholar
Scott, R. 2015. The Martian. Twentieth Century Fox, TSG Entertainment, Scott Free Productions, Genre Films, International Traders and Mid Atlantic Films, United States, Los Angeles.Search in Google Scholar
Smith, P. 2019. “The American Yeoman in Andy Weir’s The Martian.” Science-Fiction Studies 46 (2): 322–41, https://doi.org/10.1353/sfs.2019.0078.Search in Google Scholar
Squire, L. 2017. “Circles Unrounded: Sustainability, Subject and Necessity in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.” In Literature and Sustainability: Concept, Text and Culture, edited by A. Johns-Putra, J. Parham, and L. Squire, 228–45. Manchester: Manchester University Press.10.2307/j.ctt1wn0s7q.19Search in Google Scholar
Stam, R. 2004. Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Stam, R. 2005. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” In Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, edited by R. Stam and A. Raengo, 1–52. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell.10.1111/b.9780631230533.2004.xSearch in Google Scholar
Strychacz, T. 2017. “The Political Economy of Potato Farming in Andy Weir’s The Martian.” Science-Fiction Studies 44 (1): 1–20.10.5621/sciefictstud.44.1.0001Search in Google Scholar
Swyngedouw, E. 2010. “Apocalypse Forever?” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 213–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409358728.Search in Google Scholar
Ullrich, H. 1924. Defoes Robinson Crusoe: Die Geschichte eines Weltbuches. Leipzig: Reisland.Search in Google Scholar
Weaver-Hightower, R. 2007. Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar
Weir, A. 2014. The Martian: A Novel. New York: Broadway Books.Search in Google Scholar
Westbrook, B. 2010. “Being Adaptation: The Resistance to Theory.” In Adaptation Studies: New Approaches, edited by C. Albrecht-Crane, and D. R. Cutchins, 25–45. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Yang, T.-H. 2018. “An Ecological Turn in the Contemporary Robinsonade: Haushofer, Tournier, Ballard, Martel.” Doctoral Diss., National Taiwan Normal University.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Alongside – The Novel: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Fiction
- Articles
- Modern Novel Writing in the Eighteenth Century: ‘Classic’ and Later Perspectives
- György Lukács and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
- From Charlotte Smith to Jane Austen: The Evolution of the English Novel
- Bracketing Ephemera: Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins and Eighteenth-Century Book Culture
- Spreading the Work: Introducing Eighteenth-Century ‘Derivatives’ in the Classroom
- Robinson Crusoe – But on Mars: Investigating Intertextuality in Andy Weir’s The Martian (2014)
- Novel Didactics? Defoe’s Legacy in the Contemporary Children’s Robinsonade
- Books Received
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Alongside – The Novel: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Fiction
- Articles
- Modern Novel Writing in the Eighteenth Century: ‘Classic’ and Later Perspectives
- György Lukács and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
- From Charlotte Smith to Jane Austen: The Evolution of the English Novel
- Bracketing Ephemera: Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins and Eighteenth-Century Book Culture
- Spreading the Work: Introducing Eighteenth-Century ‘Derivatives’ in the Classroom
- Robinson Crusoe – But on Mars: Investigating Intertextuality in Andy Weir’s The Martian (2014)
- Novel Didactics? Defoe’s Legacy in the Contemporary Children’s Robinsonade
- Books Received
- Books Received
