Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery ( French : L'École des Robinsons , literally The School for Robinsons ), also published as School for Crusoes , is an 1882 adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne . The novel tells of a wealthy young man, Godfrey Morgan, who, with his deportment instructor, Professor T. Artelett, embark from San Francisco, California , on a round-the-world ocean voyage. They are cast away on an uninhabited Pacific island, where they must endure a series of adversities. Later, they encounter an African slave , Carefinotu, brought to the island by cannibals . In the end, the trio manage to work together and survive on the island.
29-534: The novel is a robinsonade – a play on Daniel Defoe 's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe . The narrative begins with the auction by the US Government of the fictional Spencer Island, located 460 miles off the California coast ( 32°15′N 145°18′W / 32.250°N 145.300°W / 32.250; -145.300 ). The island is uninhabited and there are only two bidders: William W. Kolderup,
58-457: A 1981 USA/Spain co-production by director Juan Piquer Simón , titled Jules Verne's Mystery on Monster Island ( Spanish : Misterio en Isla de los Monstruos ), starring Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp , with David Hatton , Ian Sera , Paul Naschy , Blanca Estrada , Ana Obregón , and Frank Braña in supporting roles. Monsters were prominently included as an element in the film are also fake made by an famous toymakers , but were absent from
87-529: A ceremony (epideictic). In the Poetics , Aristotle similarly divided poetry into three main genres: the epic , tragedy , and comedy . In the case of poetry, these distinctions are based not on rhetorical purpose, but on a combination of structure, content and narrative form. For each type, he proposed a definition as well as the rules for its construction. After the time of Aristotle, literary criticism continued to develop. The first-century Greek treatise " On
116-518: A remote island; in Ballard’s work, becoming a castaway is as much a healing and empowering process as an entrapping one, enabling people to discover a more meaningful and vital existence. Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen 's 1668 picaresque novel Simplicius Simplicissimus features a shipwrecked protagonist who lives alone on an island. One of the best known robinsonades is The Swiss Family Robinson (1812–27) by Johann David Wyss, in which
145-520: A shipwrecked clergyman, his wife, and his four sons manage not only to survive on their island but also to discover the good life. Jules Verne strands his castaways in Mysterious Island (1874) with only one match, one grain of wheat, a metal dog collar, and two watches. The robinsonade proper also contains the following themes: Genre SF robinsonades naturally tend to be set on uninhabited planets or satellites rather than islands. The Moon
174-446: A very wealthy San Franciscan, and his arch-rival J. R. Taskinar, a resident of Stockton, California . Kolderup wins the auction, buying Spencer Island for four million dollars. Taskinar mutters, "I will be avenged!" before retiring to his hotel. Godfrey, an idle twenty-two-year-old, lives with Kolderup (his uncle) and Kolderup's adopted god-daughter, Phina, whom Godfrey has grown to love. Prior to marrying Phina, Godfrey asks to undertake
203-530: A world tour. Acceding to his nephew's desire, Kolderup sends Godfrey on a sea voyage around the world, aboard one of his steamships , the Dream , commanded by Captain Turcott. Godfrey is accompanied by his mentor, teacher, and dance instructor, Professor T. Artelett (aka "Tartlet"). After some time at sea, Godfrey is awakened one foggy night and told to abandon ship as the Dream is foundering . After jumping into
232-679: Is a radical feminist objection to the entire genre. Sears List of Subject Headings recommends that librarians also catalog apocalyptic fiction —such as Cormac McCarthy 's popular novel The Road , or even Robert A. Heinlein 's Starship Troopers —as robinsonades. Literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature . Genres may be determined by literary technique , tone , content , or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even
261-531: Is commonly accepted that the genre of fiction ("literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation") is not applied to all fictitious literature, but instead encompasses only prose texts (novels, novellas, short stories) and not fables. There are other ways of categorizing books that are not usually considered "genre". Notably, this can include age categories, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult , or children's literature . There
290-474: Is the location of Ralph Morris's proto-SF The Life and Wonderful Adventures of John Daniel (1751), and of John W Campbell Jr's paean to human inventiveness, The Moon is Hell (1950). A classic example of an SF robinsonade which has all the elements of the robinsonade proper is Tom Godwin 's The Survivors , as well as J. G. Ballard 's Concrete Island . A more recent example is Andy Weir 's 2011 The Martian . Joanna Russ' We Who Are About To... (1977)
319-765: Is typically subdivided into the classic three forms of Ancient Greece, poetry , drama , and prose . Poetry may then be subdivided into the genres of lyric , epic , and dramatic . The lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry e.g., song , ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet. Dramatic poetry might include comedy , tragedy , melodrama , and mixtures like tragicomedy . The standard division of drama into tragedy and comedy derives from Greek drama. This division into subgenres can continue: comedy has its own subgenres, including, for example, comedy of manners , sentimental comedy, burlesque comedy , and satirical comedy. The genre of semi-fiction includes works that mix elements of both fiction and nonfiction. A semi-fictional work may be
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#1732790194105348-523: The comic , and the tragic through the constitution of "the relation between the hero of the work and ourselves or the laws of nature." He also uses the juxtaposition of the "real" and the "ideal" to categorize the genres of romance (the ideal), irony (the real), comedy (transition from real to ideal), and tragedy (transition from ideal to real). Lastly, he divides genres by the audience they are intended for into: drama (performed works), lyric poetry (sung works), and epic poetry (recited works). Since
377-703: The Preface of his 1731 work Die Insel Felsenburg [ de ] ( The Island Stronghold ). It is often viewed as a subgenre of survivalist fiction . Common themes of Robinsonade works include the protagonists being in a state of isolation (e.g. on a desert island or an uninhabited planet ), a new beginning for the work's characters, self-reflection as a plot point, contact with indigenous peoples or extraterrestrial life and social commentary . Unlike Thomas More 's Utopia and romantic works which depicted nature as idyllic, Crusoe made it unforgiving and sparse. The protagonist survives by his wits and
406-591: The Romantic period, modern genre theory often sought to dispense with the conventions that have marked the categorization of genres for centuries. However, the twenty-first century has brought a new era in which genre has lost much of the negative connotations associating it with loss of individuality or excess conformity. Genre categorizes literary works based on specific shared conventions, including style, mood, length, and organizational features. These genres are in turn divided into subgenres . Western literature
435-557: The Sublime ", for example, discussed the works of more than 50 literary writers and the methods they used to influence their audiences' emotions and feelings. The origins of modern Western genre theory can be traced to the European Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during which the concept of genre was scrutinized heavily. The idea that it was possible to ignore genre constraints and
464-418: The film was released on DVD by 20th Century Fox as part of a double feature with Gorilla at Large (1954). Robinsonade Robinsonade ( / ˌ r ɒ b ɪ n s ə ˈ n eɪ d / ROB -in-sən- AYD ) is a literary genre of fiction wherein the protagonist is suddenly separated from civilization, usually by being shipwrecked or marooned on a secluded and uninhabited island, and must improvise
493-478: The idea that each literary work was a "genre unto itself" gained popularity. Genre definitions were thought to be "primitive and childish." At the same time, the Romantic period saw the emergence of a new genre, the 'imaginative' genre. The reason for this shift is often attributed to the social events that were taking place in the Western world in terms of wars, infighting and overthrown leadership. People felt
522-482: The means of their survival from the limited resources at hand. The genre takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe . The success of this novel spawned so many imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a " desert island story" or a " castaway narrative". The word "robinsonade" was coined by the German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in
551-399: The need for "escapism" to remove themselves from their respective situations. In 1957 Canadian scholar Northrop Frye published "Anatomy of Criticism," in which he proposes a system of genres and a set of rules to describe the constraints of each genre. In this work, he defines methodological classifications of the genres of myth , legend , high mimetic genre, low mimetic genre, irony ,
580-555: The novel is a large genre of narrative fiction; within the category of the novel, the detective novel is a sub-genre, while the "hard-boiled" detective novel is a sub-genre of the detective novel. In the Rhetoric , Aristotle proposed three literary genres of rhetorical oratory: deliberative , forensic , and epideictic . These are divided based on the purpose of the orator: to argue for future policy or action (deliberative), discuss past action (forensic), or offer praise or blame during
609-439: The novel, in which the villain J. R. Taskinar introduces non-indigenous carnivores to the island to take revenge on Kolderup for his auction win. Despite its similar title, the film has no connection with the better-known Verne novel The Mysterious Island (1875), though some reviewers have disregarded this. Peter Cushing and Paul Naschy both have very brief cameo appearances in the film, and do not share any scenes. In 2007,
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#1732790194105638-478: The qualities of his cultural upbringing, which also enable him to prevail in conflicts with fellow castaways or over local peoples he may encounter. However, he manages to wrest survival and even a certain amount of civilisation from the wilderness. Works that followed went both in the more utopian direction ( The Swiss Family Robinson ) and the dystopian direction ( Lord of the Flies ). The term inverted Crusoeism
667-475: The retelling of a true story with only the names changed; at the other end of the spectrum, it may present fictional events with a semi-fictional protagonist, as in Jerry Seinfeld . Often, the criteria used to divide up works into genres are not consistent, and can be subject to debate, change and challenge by both authors and critics. However, some basic distinctions are widely accepted. For example, it
696-430: The rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable. Genres can all be in the form of prose or poetry . Additionally, a genre such as satire , allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre (see below), but as a mixture of genres. They are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. The concept of genre began in
725-456: The sea, Godfrey is washed ashore on a deserted island, where he soon finds Tartlet has also been marooned . Godfrey, with scant help from Tartlet, will have to learn to survive, organize his life, face hostile intruders, and overcome other obstacles. Eventually, they are also joined by the African slave Carefinotu, whom Godfrey rescues from Polynesian warriors visiting the island. By the end of
754-554: The story, the formerly-jaded Godfrey has discovered the value of independent effort, and he gains poise and courage. The marooned group are rescued and returned to San Francisco, where Godfrey is reunited with Phina. They agree to marry before continuing Godfrey's world tour, this time together. Although the setting is different, the robinsonade plot is a variation on the theme of rational self-sufficiency that Verne developed earlier in The Mysterious Island (1874). At
783-411: The time of publication, it was common for a young man of wealth to undertake travel as an educational rite of passage ; for example, the California heir Leland Stanford, Jr. took two European Grand Tours : one in 1880-81, and the second in 1884, during which he died. The original French version of Verne's novel was published in 1882, after Stanford's first tour. The novel was adapted (very loosely) as
812-488: The works of Aristotle , who applied biological concepts to the classification of literary genres, or, as he called them, "species" (eidē). These classifications are mainly discussed in his treatises Rhetoric and Poetics . Genres are categories into which kinds of literary material are organized. The genres Aristotle discusses include the epic, the tragedy, the comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and phallic songs. Genres are often divided into complex sub-categories. For example,
841-404: Was coined by English writer J. G. Ballard . The paradigm of Robinson Crusoe has been a recurring topic in Ballard’s work. Whereas the original Robinson Crusoe became a castaway against his own will, Ballard's protagonists often choose to maroon themselves; hence inverted Crusoeism (e.g., Concrete Island ). The concept provides a reason as to why people would deliberately maroon themselves on
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