Elizabeth Bishop's "Crusoe in England" was published in 1976, in the poet's last collection, Geography III. It retells the well-known narrative of Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist of Daniel Defoe's early English novel Robinson Crusoe. Like Defoe's protagonist, Bishop's speaker is a sailor who has survived on a desolate island as a castaway for years on end before being rescued and brought back to England. Like Defoe's Crusoe, Bishop's speaker forms a relationship with an indigenous man on the island, whom he calls Friday. Bishop's version of Crusoe, however, narrates from his home in England, looking back on his years on the faraway island. He reflects on the devastating boredom and fear of his life alone, as well as on the isolation and alienation he experiences after his rescue. Bishop delves into themes of memory and loneliness, while also exploring questions of creativity and the role of art and culture in human fulfillment. By framing Crusoe and Friday's relationship as a romantic one, before describing Friday's death, Bishop also engages with and explores the paired nature of love and grief.
This poem is a long and unstructured one. It consists of twelve stanzas of uneven length, with no set meter or rhyme scheme, although it does contain instances of both rhyme and traditional poetic meter sprinkled throughout. The poem heavily employs many types of figurative language, especially simile and personification. These instances of figurative speech help to illustrate Crusoe's vast webs of association and experience as he draws metaphorical connections between England and the deserted island where he survives. Like much of Bishop's work, it explores questions of love, loss, death, and artistic creation—and, also in line with her other poems, it takes a restrained and understated approach to extreme emotional (and sometimes physical) realities.
