{"id":11562,"date":"2014-02-02T09:27:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T13:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11562"},"modified":"2014-02-02T09:27:59","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T13:27:59","slug":"if-feb-1-was-robinson-crusoe-day-then-feb-2-must-be-hayy-ibn-yaqzan-dayright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/if-feb-1-was-robinson-crusoe-day-then-feb-2-must-be-hayy-ibn-yaqzan-dayright\/","title":{"rendered":"If Feb 1 Was Robinson Crusoe Day, then Feb 2 Must Be Hayy ibn Yaqzan Day\u2026Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Arab Literature (in English)<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:
\n\"yaqz01h6\"<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/td>\nby mlynxqualey<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The first of February apparently was\u00a0Robinson Crusoe Day, with a plethora of <\/i>activities, books, lesson plans and more<\/i><\/a> being offered around the Internet, for readers <\/i>small<\/i><\/a> and <\/i>not-so-small<\/i><\/a>. It’s Feb 1 because that’s the day Alexander Selkirk — <\/i>who may have been a key inspiration for\u00a0<\/i>Robinson Crusoe<\/a> —\u00a0was apparently\u00a0rescued from the island of Juan Fernandez. Certainly, there are other possible models, among them a narrative by Ibn Tufayl that was “<\/i>a sensation among intellectuals in Daniel Defoe’s day<\/i><\/a>“:<\/i><\/p>\n

Nearly eleven years back, on the occasion of Ibn Tufayl’s narrative being adapted for children<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>Martin Wainwright argued that “Tufayl’s footprints mark the great classic”,\u00a0Robinson Crusoe.<\/i><\/p>\n

That may be. But whether or no the 12th-century\u00a0Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Alive, son of Awake)\u00a0<\/i>influenced Defoe’s 1719 desert-island novel, the\u00a0Andalusia-born philosopher’s work is interesting on its own two feet.<\/p>\n

The narrative tells the story of an orphaned boy, Hayy, who is raised in the wild by a gazelle, and how he comes to grips with human reason and human society. Some call it a philosophical narrative, some a coming-of-age novel, some a compendium of Islamic science,\u00a0some proto-science fiction<\/a>. The narrative has inspired numerous adaptations; in addition to the one in 2003, in 2011\u00a0Iranian-American director\u00a0Mohammad Ghaffari adapted it to the stage<\/a>, also apparently suited for children, as it continued in Minneapolis’s Children’s Theatre Company.<\/p>\n

Hayy ibn Yaqzan\u00a0<\/i>was also re-translated by\u00a0Lenn E. Goodman and published in 2003<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An open-source version of\u00a0Hayy ibn Yaqzan’s\u00a0<\/i>original English translation, by Simon Ockley, pub. 1708. Not exactly suited to the modern reader, but:\u00a0<\/b>Via the Gutenberg project<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

P.S. by P.J.:In volume 4 of Poems for the Millennium (The UC Book of North African Literature)<\/a> I used extracts from the\u00a0excellent \u00a0translation with an introduction & notes by Lenn Evan Goodman<\/a> from Chicago University Press:<\/p>\n

\"IbnTufayl\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

via Arab Literature (in English): by mlynxqualey The first of February apparently was\u00a0Robinson Crusoe Day, with a plethora of activities, books, lesson plans and more being offered around the Internet, for readers small and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,103],"tags":[1485,1484],"class_list":["post-11562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-translation","tag-hayy-ibn-yaqzan","tag-ibn-tufayl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11562"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11569,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11562\/revisions\/11569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}