Follow-up: Defoe the Traveller
- He paid several visits to Scotland in the early
1700s (this was near the time of the Act of Union)
- In 1724-1726, three volumes of his Tour Through
the Whole Island of Great Britain were published.
(It might be useful to remind ourselves of the link between the
words travel and travail, implying hardships and tribulations…
some of which we’ll read about in the next novel by Fielding)
Followup: Defoe’s Involvement in
Politics
- He joined the rebellion when James II (a
Catholic!) ascended to the throne in 1685
- Defoe was part of the welcoming party in 1688
for William III (William of Orange—you may have seen
part of his quarters. at Hampton Court). Defoe called
William “the Glorious, Great, and Good, and
Kind.” Defoe became the leading pamphletwriter for William III (before newspapers became
common)
Defoe’s involvement in Politics
“Englishmen are no more to be slaves to
Parliaments than to a King,” Defoe wrote in
response to the illegal imprisonment of 16
“gentlemen of quality” for demanding greater
defense measures.
Defoe the Journalist
During the reign of Queen Anne he published a
periodical called The Review—from 1704 to
1713.
At first it was weekly, but was eventually
published three times a week. He continued
to publish it even when he was imprisoned at
Newgate.
Defoe’s interest in trade
Defoe called trade his “beloved subject,” and—
though largely unsuccessfully—he spent a lot
of energy starting businesses. At one point, he
went bankrupt (he had been insuring ships),
owing as much as 17,000 pounds.
- He wrote that “thirteen times I have been rich
and poor.”
- He started a brick and tile business later in life
“New Career”
When Defoe turned to the writing of novels,
which has earned him the title of “The Father
of the English Novel,” he was 59 years old.
Personal Life
He married Mary Tuffley, who bore him eight
children (six lived to adulthood)
The couple remained married for 47 years.
Dr. Johnson on Robinson
Crusoe
“Was there every
yet anything
written by mere
man that was
wished longer by
its readers,
excepting Don
Quixote, Robinson
Crusoe, and The
Pilgrim’s Progress?”
Hugh Blair (1783)
“While it is carried on with that appearance of
truth and simplicity, which takes a strong hold
on the imagination of all Readers, it suggests,
at the same time, very useful instruction; by
showing how much the native powers of man
may be exerted for surmounting the
difficulties of any external situation.”
George Chambers
“Few books have ever so naturally mingled
amusement with instruction.”
(Chambers is invoking a goal of literature
harking back to Horace in Roman days: that
literature should be utile et dulce: i.e. not only
beautiful and aesthetic but useful.)
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762)
It is "the one book that teaches all that books
can teach." In Emile, the teacher wants his
student to read ONLY Robinson Crusoe to
"guide his development to a state of reason"
and teach him to judge everything by its
usefulness.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - during the
Romantic Period
“Crusoe himself is merely a representative of
humanity in general. . . . nothing is done,
thought, or suffered, or desired but what
every man can imagine himself doing,
thinking, feeling, or wishing for.”
James Beattie (1783)
“ … founded on a passion
still more prevalent than
love, the desire of selfpreservation. . . . It fixes
in the mind a lively idea
of the horrors of solitude,
and, consequently, of the
sweets of social life, and
of the blessings we derive
from conversation, and
mutual aid. . .
. . . the second part of the
story is tiresome.”
“. . . There is nothing of love
in it.”
John J. Richetti
- established Crusoe as the typical Englishman,
as an archetypal "personage of the last two
hundred and fifty years of European
consciousness."
Walter Allen (The English Novel)
In Robinson Crusoe we see the dramatization of
"the inescapable solitariness of each man in
his relation to God and the universe."
“Defoe displays his finest gift as a novelist—his insight into
human nature. The men and women he writes about are
all, it is true, placed in unusual circumstances; they are all,
in one sense or another, solitaries; they all struggle, in their
different ways, through a life that is a constant scene of
jungle warfare; they all become, to some extent, obsessive.
They are also ordinary human beings, however, and Defoe,
writing always in the first person, enters into their minds
and analyzes their motives. His novels are given
verisimilitude by their matter-of-fact style and their vivid
concreteness of detail; the latter may seem unselective, but
it effectively helps to evoke a particular, circumscribed
world.”