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Definitions: female robinsonade

A female robinsonade, then, is a robinsonade written by a female author and/or telling the story of female castaway(s). The term was first coined by Jeannine Blackwell in an article from 1985. Due to the resemblances with autobiographies from the same period, Blackwell assumes that even anonymously written robinsonades with female heroines were written by female authors. So to her, a female robinsonade is a story written by a female author about a female Robinson. Her assumption about authorship does obviously not hold, there is no evidence of female authorship in many of the cases, and I also find it quite reducing to the complexity of the intersection of genre and gender. In my opinion it is also very interesting to include both robinsonades written by female authors with male protagonists and robinsonades written by men, telling the stories of female Robinsons. That means that gender is a relevant dimension of both authorship and plot - i.e. of adventure, shipwreck and survival in the desert. So is the perspective of readership.