BIOGRAFIA

The English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist, Daniel Defoe, was born in 1660 in
London, in a family of Dissenters and he was educated to become a Presbyterians minister.

After travelling to France, Spain and the Low Countries, he decided to go into business.
Defoe was also actively involved in politics.

When King James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, for instance, Defoe
wrote articles in support of the new king.

In 1701 he wrote a brilliant, witty poem, The True-born Englishman, in defence of the
king who was attacked in some circles as a 'foreigner.

After the death of King William in 1702, the Tories, had come to power in Parliament and
with them came renewed hostility towards Dissenters like Defoe.

In 1703 Defoe published one of his most famous pamphlets, The Shortest Way with
Dissenters, in which he pretended to write from the point of view of his adversaries and
reduced their arguments to ridicule.

After this, he was fined, imprisoned for three months and forced to stand three times in the
public pillory.

In the prison he had the opportunity to explore the psychological characteristics of

prisoners.

After spending many years as a journalist, publishing The Review in 1704, Defoe began to
work on extended fiction, producing the works for which he is remembered today and is
considered the "father of English novel".

Defoe in fact published in 1719 Robinson Crusoe, a novel drawing inspiration from
authentic accounts of real castaways.

This was the beginning of his career as a novelist and was followed by other novels,
including Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and his last important prose work, Roxana
(1724).

His literary masterpiece Robinson Crusoe was popular with the public, but despite his
success Defoe was continually tormented by debts.

He died at the age of 70, according to some reports hiding from a debt collector in a
boarding house in London.

 Defoe was at heart a businessman, a professional writer careful to respond to the

needs of a new and expanding middle-class reading public.

His novels usually centre on a single hero, whose adventures and thoughts are
explored using the 1"-person narrator, and are characterised by an adventurous
style which 18th-century readers greatly appreciated.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

Robinson Crusoe born in York in 1632 of a German father and an English mother.

At the age of nineteen, against his will parents‘ wishes, Robinson decides to leave to try his
fortune at sea and travel around the world.

After his first journey to Guinea, Crusoe boards another ship, but he is captured and taken
prisoner by North African pirates.

Escaping away with a slave boy on a fishing boat, he is rescued by a ship and taken to
Brazil, where Crusoe becomes a successful plantation owner.
However, needing slaves for his plantation, he sets for West Africa but is shipwrecked on an
island near Trinidad where he will remain for 28 years.

He discovers that he is the sole survivor of the wreck.

He builds a shelter, raises goats to eat and places a cross with the date of his arrival, 1
September, 1659.

He adds a notch to the cross every day to keep track of time and writes a daily journal of his
activities.

He also learns practical activities, trains a parrot to speak and lives comfortably for a few
years. Some time later a group of cannibals lands on the island. Crusoe hides in fear, but
when one of their prisoners escapes and runs to Crusoe's home, Crusoe rescues him and
shoots his persecutors and drives them away.

The man he saved promises to serve Crusoe. Crusoe calls it "Friday", after the day they
met. He teaches some English words and elements of Christianity on Friday.

In the religious debate between Robinson and Friday , it emerges that Friday believes in a
God named Pakia who is a crocodile, while Robinson supports the Christian faith.

According to Robinson Gianni cannot worship a crocodile because he induces violence

against the next. Robinson considers Pakia as a pagan blasphemy, for the true God is
greater and more powerful and teaches us to love to the next.

 At the end of the debate to prove the existence of God, Robinson shows Friday the Bible
and later will be able to convert him.

When the cannibals return to the island, Crusoe is forced to attack them to save their two
prisoners: one Spanish and the other is Friday's father. A week later a ship is sighted.

Crusoe embarks on the ship and can now return to England. On the way home he discovers
that his plantation has been very successful, making him a very rich man. He settles in
England, gets married and has three children.

A FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY

At the time of its publication, Robinson Crusoe was generally believed to be an authentic,
true account.

In fact Crusoe’s story is considered a fictional autobiography because Defoe said that the
fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe was the author and he pretended to be the editor of
Crusoe’s autobiography. Defoe took so much attention to small details that it led many
readers to believe that Crusoe was a real person and the novel a true report of his life.

Addressed to an expanding middle-class readership, Defoe’s language is direct and simple.

ROBINSON CRUSOE: THE “ECONOMIC MAN”

Robinson Crusoe is the prototype of the “economic man” because he manages to replicate
all the fundamental production processes of western civilization in his small land.

Crusoe also through reason will be able to transform a deserted and wild place into a
civilized reality, managing to convert heathen Friday to Christianity.

This shows that Defoe invested his novel with a didactic, moral purpose as he
demonstrates the power of divine Providence in saving a castaway who has sinned by
abandoning his family and forgetting his religious teaching.

THE ISLAND AS A MICROCOSM

Crusoe’s island represent a microcosm allowing him to repent from his sins, to appreciate
the values of the life he rejected at home, to fulfil his role as a Christian man by converting
a man who has sinned and to prove his capacity to build a perfectly functioning society.
Symbolically, the island is the primitive version of England, the current island abandoned by
Crusoe.

18° CENTURY NOVELS

Are long narratives in prose;

are narrated by narrators who tell their stories in chronological order;

usually deal with the stories of realistic people and portray realistic events;

belong to three categories, memoirs, epistolary novels, picaresque novels;

aim to educate readers and arouse moral reflections: are written in a simple language

can be memories which are fictional autobiographies narrated by 1"-person narrators

(Robinson Crusoe)

can be epistolary novels which are written in the form of letters

can be picaresque novels which deal with the adventures of travelling characters told by 3-
person narrators.