ABSTRACT
In the “Preface” of Guillaume Grivel’s L’Isle inconnue ou mémoires du chevalier des Gastines, published in 1783 and 1787, the author defends himself from the accusation that he has too slavishly followed the plot of Robinson Crusoe. Actually, he insists, Defoe has done nothing but retell the story of the Scot Alexander Serkick, whereas his own book is quite different, despite the repeated theme of men abandoned on an island. Pace Rousseau and other apologists of the English novel, Defoe’s vision is rather pathetic; lacking vision and skill, his creation is a failure. What after all could one expect of two such limited people as Robinson and Friday but a miserable old age and an unhappy death, at least if the author had allowed their destiny to run its course. How much better to give a shipwrecked young man a tender companion. This, of course, constitutes Grivel’s invention. “Oh! what a career is opening before you! … You will see a family born, multiply, expand…. In a word, you will see the History of the human condition & the golden age.”1 Curiously, Grivel’s fictional world is patterned after biblical and mythic precedents and ends no better than the one he inhabited.
