SOURCE: Feurle, Gisela. “‘Welcome Robinson Crusoe, Welcome!’: The Story Re-Told by a Female Voice from Africa in Bessie Head's Botswana Village Tales.” In Across the Lines: Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures in English, edited by Wolfgang Kloos, pp. 141–49. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.

In the following essay, Feurle discusses parallels between Head's “The Wind and a Boy” and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

1 Introduction

I shall be dealing with my topic from two angles: first, by interpreting Bessie Head's story “The Wind and a Boy”¹ and the intertextuality involved; secondly, by discussing some aspects of the reception of this text and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

My focus on reception is based on my teaching experience and (self-) observation. I read texts of African literature—among others short stories of Bessie Head—in a course with students at the Oberstufenkolleg in Bielefeld, making intercultural understanding an explicit topic. During my...