History of English Literature

Daniel Defoe (1667 1731)

Life and career Born in London son of a tallow-chandler a Dissenter

(member of a Christian group who does not acknowledge the Established Church e.g. Puritans) real name: Daniel Foe

Early commercial career considerable prosperity Restless nature versatility a variety of careers: trade,

business projects, journalism, literature First important work: An Essay upon Projects, 1697 concerns:

trade, banking, health service, education, academy for women, the state of the English language (correct language, polite learning)

political pamphleteer supporter of the Whigs, then of the Tories; supporter of William III (e.g. The True-born Englishman, 1701 his first literary success), then of the Hanoverians

The True-born Englishman, 1701 an anti-xenophobic pamphlet in support of William III of Orange the English: not a pure, but a mixed race [] a race uncertain and uneven,

Derived from all the nations under Heaven. The Romans first with Julius Csar came, Including all the nations of that name, Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computation, Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation. With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came, In search of plunder, not in search of fame.

Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore, And conquering William brought the Normans o'er. []

From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, surnames, languages, and manners Of all these nations are their own explainers: []

By which with easy search you may distinguish Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.

1702: the accession of Queen Anne the rise of Tory power persecution of Dissenters

The satire The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 1702 he assumes the literary mask of a Tory Anglican and ironically suggests that the extirpation of the Dissenters as the only way to save the Church of England

Let her foundations be established upon the destruction of her enemies! The doors of Mercy being always open to the returning part of the deluded people, let the obstinate be ruled with the rod of iron!

This biting satire inspired Swift for A Modest Proposal its irony failed to be understood as such Defoe incurred the anger of both Tories and Whigs he was imprisoned and condemned to stand in the pillory Hymn to the Pillory released in 1703

among the founders of modern journalism: The Review (1703-1713) support for a series of both Whig and Tory politicians

Novelistic career In 1719: Defoe turns to fiction writing Robinson Crusoe followed

quickly by two sequels: The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe : with his Vision of the angelick world (1720)

Enormous success their huge popularity encouraged Defoe to continue his novelistic career

other novels: The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton,

1720 The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, 1722

The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, 1722 Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress, 1724

He also continued to write on moral, religious, social, economic, historical matters

The genius for mixing fact with fiction: The Memoirs of a Cavalier (the Thirty Years War; the Civil War); A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)

Defoe never admitted to writing fiction he presents his stories as authentic documents (true accounts) diaries or memoirs the Editor convention

Marked didactic tendency e.g. Robinson Crusoe: written by himself meant to provide the instruction of others by this example and to justify and honour the wisdom of providence in all the variety of our circumstances

The Preface to Moll Flanders recommends it as a work from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious inference is drawn

~THE NOVEL AS HONEST CHEAT~

William Hogarth (16971764) The Harlots Progress (1731) Moll Hackabout

Characteristics of Defoes heroes and heroines hey start at the periphery of society (exception: Robinson Crusoe) from

anonymity and poverty to wealth and security their means of securing economic success clash with the socially

accepted moral norms vitality, resourcefulness, capacity for adjustment and survival pragmatic, dynamic, versatile the individual victorious over circumstances and environment (physical

and social) rise to affluence and social respectability moral reformation his novels: stories of success picaresque form influences: criminal biographies (popular in the 17th and 18th centuries)

a rogues life: recipe for literary and financial success combines in them entertainment with moral teaching the reformation

of a sinner, rewarded by Providence (a reflection of Defoes Puritan background the influence of didactic and religious treatises; the Puritan / spiritual autobiography)

Robinson Crusoe 1719

Alexander Selkirk reading his Bible Illustration from The Life of Alexander

Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe: a narrative founded on facts (anonymous, 1837)

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone in an uninhabited island on the Coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque [Orinoco] ; Having been cast on shore by Shipwreck, wherein all Men perished but himself, With An Account how he was at last as strangely delivered by Pirates. Written by Himself)

Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor, abandoned on an island in the South Pacific, who survived almost five years (1704-1709) in complete solitude before being rescued

Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe themes and motifs

A Puritan Odyssey The archetypal motif of the son leaving home in

defiance of parental will Robinsons original sin The pursuit by Fate in the classical epic the

Puritan themes of predestination and divine grace, of sin and retribution the allegorical journey from sin to salvation

[During his first voyage, after a storm] My ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing

could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason () to go home, yet I had no power to do it. [He thinks of] a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction.

[During his first year on the island] Now, said I aloud, my dear fathers words are come to pass:

Gods justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me: I have rejected the voice of Providence, which had mercifully put me in a posture or station of life wherein I might have been happy and easy; but I would neither see it myself, or learn to know the blessing of it from my parents.

Robinson Crusoe as a spiritual autobiography in the Puritan tradition

The model: John Bunyan Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Pilgrims Progress (1678)

Stories of the reformation of consciousness, of spiritual awakening Life as journey: the realisation of ones sinful nature penitence,

sincere repentance the revelation of Gods benevolence; spiritual salvation

Robinsons isolation on the island: a punishment, but also an opportunity to reflect on his mistakes and the occasion for a radical spiritual change

The experience of the island acquires a new meaning isolation: the proper condition for the typically Puritan act of self-scrutiny and introspection the Puritan quest for the retired soul (Ian Watt)

In Serious Reflections, Defoe suggests an allegorical reading of the novel Robinson: It seems to me that life in general is, or ought to be, but one universal act of solitude

The felix culpa motif the fortunate mistake, the mistake with fortunate consequences

Robinson realises that Providence had not intended him for destruction, but for deliverance the revelation of Gods goodness has radically altered both his knowledge (different notions of things) and his desires and delights

The island: from prison (punishment for his disobedience) to a home the motif of the Prodigal Son Robinsons symbolic reconciliation with his father through his recognition of the heavenly Father

The romantic hero, in search for adventure at sea, turns into the quiet, pragmatic middle-class seeker for comfort at home

The island: from prison to the equivalent of Paradise: I began now to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be

more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world

The island as Utopia An economic utopia The businessmans utopia no competitors, no rivals The rational pursuit of material self-interest a utilitarian philosophy

a reflection of Lockes conception of economic life in the state of nature The redemptive value of work the dignity of labour work: no longer

the Adamic curse, but a source of satisfaction; character-forming Robinsons insistence on infinite labour, on patience and relentless

effort, and on the spiritual reward of hard work The dignity of work the possibility of regaining Paradise The defamiliarisation of basic economic processes, which have

become alien in a complex economic system, based on the division of labour

Ian Watt: Manufacture, trade and commerce had made the main processes whereby man secures shelter, food, and clothing become alien to the everyday knowledge of Defoes contemporaries.

The function of utopia as education of desire I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, nor the pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying

Robinson vs. the romantic hero: not a fortunate conquest of wealth (which would remove the necessity of work), but the ordinary economic activities which enable subsistence

the celebration of homo faber the autonomus, self-reliant individual focus on personal achievement a reflection of the individualistic ethos of Defoes time

The motif of the island and the theme of solitude seen as a critique of the values of civilisation

Jean Jacques Rousseau: Robinson Crusoe: the best treatise on natural education symbolic return to the state of nature (innocence), as opposed to the false and corrupting conventions of civilisation

Robinson: the essential Englishman, the British imperialist, or universal man ?

A) Robinson: the essence of Englishness pragmatic, commonsensical, resourceful, taste for travel, love of the sea, piety, commercial and practical instincts

His homely virtues: a celebration of middle-class Englishness Walter Scott: Crusoes rough good sense, his prejudices, and

his obstinate determination not to sink under evils which can be surpassed by exertion, forms no bad specimen of the True-Born Englishman

Victorian (19th century) critics see in Crusoe the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race (Walter Raleigh), as manifest in the conquest of India and North America

Leslie Stephen : Robinson as the typical Englishman of his time:

He is the broad-shouldered, beef-eating John Bull, who has been shouldering his way through the world ever since. Drop him in a desert island, and he is just as sturdy and self-composed as if he were in Cheapside. Instead of shrieking or writing poetry, becoming a wild hunter or a religious hermit, he calmly sets about building a house and making pottery and laying out a farm. . . . Cannibals come to make a meal of him, and he calmly stamps them out with the means provided by civilisation. Long years of solitude produce no sort of effect upon him morally or mentally. He comes home as he went out, a solid keen tradesman, having, somehow or other, plenty of money in his pockets, and ready to undertake similar risks in the hope of making a little more. He has taken his own atmosphere with him to the remotest quarters. Wherever he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the country.

John Doyle, Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday (1840)

B) Crusoe as the embodiment of British imperialism e.g. James Joyce Defoes novel: a prophecy of empire Robinson is the true

prototype of the British colonist, as Friday is the symbol of the subject races The opposition civilised man/savage cannibal Crusoe: the imperialist desire for

mastery Defoes novel: the prototypical colonial novel of the 18th century The typical colonial situation: the white Westerner conquering a foreign

territory, which he turns into a liveable environment through intelligence and hard work, and on which he imposes the ideas of order of his own civilisation

Numerous postcolonial replies to Robinson Crusoe contemporary writers from former colonies writing back to Defoes master colonial narrative e.g. Derek Walcott (West Indies): Pantomime (1978), J.M Coetzee (South Africa): Foe (1986)

Counterargument: The high point of Crusoes enjoyment of authoritarian kingship occurs when he is in

total solitude, reigning over a parrot, a dog, and two cats; he becomes embroiled in unwanted complications from the moment that Friday, his first human subject, appears. When his island becomes an organized colony in communication with the outside world, Crusoe loses all interest in it except in so far as it ministers to his vanity. (Patrick Parrinder)

Crusoe and his man Friday

R.J. Hamerton, Punch, 1843

C) Robinson Crusoe as the universal individual The Romantics interpreted Crusoe as a figure of general human

significance his experience: universally appealing For Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he is the universal

representative, the person for whom every reader could substitute himself Defoes novel makes me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, raises me into the universal man

Contemporary critics: Crusoe as the embodiment of modern man the individualist self e.g. Louis James: Crusoes contradictions are basic to the human predicament for both Western and non-Western readers

Thomas M. Kavanagh: Robinson Crusoe is the story of a man alone; a story of how, within that solitude, he achieves an awareness of self denied him during his time among men

Defoes style Genius for narrative His style: influenced by his journalistic career Features: simplicity, flexibility, immediacy, urgency,

factuality, lack of unnecessary ornamentation, plainness Accessible to a large audience contributed

considerably to the democratisation of literature The world of common fact and action Defoes style

evokes a tangible reality, but allows for symbolic meaning

Narrative realism impression of authenticity faithfulness to detail, episodic structure of the story (imitates the episodic quality of life itself)

Ian Watt on Defoes style

Defoe concentrates his attention on the primary qualities of objects as Locke had defined them: especially solidity, extension and number; and he presents them in the simplest language Defoes prose contains a higher percentage of words of Anglo-Saxon origin than that of any other well known English writer except Bunyan. His sentences, it is true, are often long and rambling, but Defoe somehow makes this a part of his air of authenticity. The lack of strong pauses within the sentence gives his style an urgent, immediate, breathless quality; at the same time his units of meaning are so small, and their relatedness is made so clear by frequent repetition and recapitulation, that he nevertheless gives the impression of perfect lucidity.

Robinson Crusoe revisited and revised

The immense popularity of Defoes novel numerous rewritings and imitations

the Robinsonades desert island stories

E.g. The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (1812)

1959 movie treehouse concept by artist John Hench

Contemporary rewritings

William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)

Michel Tournier, Vendredi, ou les limbes du Pacifique (1967)

[Friday or the Other Island]

Song from Robinson Crusoe, Jr. (1916) an American musical fantasy