Detailed Description

Katherine Frank's Laurie Lee Lecture tells of the circumstances behind Crusoe. Suffering from temporary immobility herself, she was drawn to write a biography of Daniel Defoe, but found increasingly that this project itself blown off-course by an unpredicted shift in her interests, away from the compelling, but ultimately elusive, man himself towards the myth of Crusoe and the various real-life castaway narratives entwined with it - notably those of Alexander Selkirk and Robert Knox.  The lecture fascinatingly demonstrates the parallels between Defoe's novel and Knox's own unpublished, life-story, before contrasting Crusoe's story of endurance, prosperity  and conquest with Knox's complex, yet sadder tale of exile and estrangement.  The lecture in the process creates new perspectives on Defoe's story - its orgins and its mythical afterlife.