ABSTRACT
Island physicality lies at the heart of Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson, first published between 1812 and 1813: the narrative – as an island castaway story – requires an island setting by its very definition. Characters and readers have assumed an island setting for the novel. The chapter proposes that this blatant spatial assumption has come about as a result of the legacy of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and our broader cultural engagement with fictional island spaces. Consequently, in order to understand the spatial assumptions at play in our discourse surrounding The Swiss Family Robinson, it is imperative to understand the broader narrative context in which the story is situated and, more specifically, the foundational constructs at work in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. John Seelye's 2007 literary edition of The Swiss Family Robinson is the closest one can find to an authoritative English version of the original text.
