Lutz Seilers Kruso – soziale Utopie, pastoraler Feuilletonroman und pikareske Robinsonade

Year 2015, Volume: 2 Issue: 34, 47 - 58, 01.10.2015

Heiko Ullrich

Abstract

Lutz Seilers Kruso
– soziale Utopie, pastoraler
Feuilletonroman und pikareske Robinsonade    

Keywords

Lutz Seilers Kruso, Utopie

Lutz Seiler’s Kruso – Social Utopia, Pastoral Mystery Novel and Picaresque Robinsonade

Abstract

Lutz Seiler’s first novel Kruso, published in 2014, is based on a genre of undisputed
popularity: the robinsonade, named after Daniel Defoes famous Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe (1719). Numerous hints in Seiler’s text point at this
model, but the pattern of his plot follows a specifically German tradition of
the robinsonade. This tradition stems from Johann Gottfried
Schnabel’s Wunderliche Fata einiger
See-Fahrer (1731-1743), known also under the title Insel Felsenburg, invented by the editor Ludwig Tieck in 1828.
Schnabel combines the robinsonade with the genre
of Utopia by describing an ideal state on the island of Felsenburg, with the
mystery novel by letting his figures discover pre-Christian sanctuaries all
over the island,
and the picaresque by including the protagonist’s retrospect after leaving the
island of his adventure. This analysis of
Schnabel’s novel, undertaken by Günter Dammann in 1997, will proof to be a
usefull tool for further enquiry in Seiler’s Kruso   

Keywords

Lutz Seiler, Kruso, Johann Gottfried Schnabel, intertextuality, subgenres of the novel

References

• Macchia, Giovanni (1978): Il principe di Palagonia. Mostri, sogni, prodigi nelle metamorfosi di un personaggio, Mondadori, Milano.