Topoi

Robinson Crusoe is a challenging text to map because of Crusoe’s adventures prior to arrival on the island as well as on the island itself which means that spatial experience functions at two main scales. The double hemisphere World Map that was made for the 4th edition of Robinson Crusoe (by famous map-maker Herman Moll) was given to show Crusoe’s travels around the known world at that time. This global scale is reflected on the topoi map here by the purple lines extending leftwards with their own independent loops along the coast of Africa; the North Sea round Lisbon and to Brazil. In contrast, on the right of the map, the cluster of places in orange, with purple lines extending from and feeding into it, is centred on the island space but makes explicit how much of that experience is interior as much as exterior. Thus the physical space acts directly on mental space. The long orange feelers that reach across the page leftwards, almost inevitably, extend towards “home”.