Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) has traditionally been regarded as a foundational English novel concerned with adventure, individualism, capitalism and colonialism. However, ecocriticism provides a critical framework for understanding Crusoe as a text deeply engaged with human and nonhuman relations. Ecocriticism interrogates literary depictions of nature, examines anthropocentric assumptions, and examines how narratives reflect environmental values and crises. This paper offers an ecocritical examination of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), analyzing how Crusoe’s relationship with the natural world reflects early modern anthropocentrism and foreshadows ecological and colonial imperatives in Western literature. Through an ecocritical lens informed by foundational theory and recent scholarship, Crusoe’s survival narrative reveals both the tensions and paradoxes of human-nature relations. The analysis highlights Crusoe’s domination over and eventual complex entanglement with the nonhuman environment on the island, demonstrating that Defoe’s narrative can be read as an early commentary on ecological consciousness.
ADHUZE, HELEN IDOWU, PhD (Fri,) studied this question.