THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE OF YORK, MARINER.

TIME AND DURATION

"The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, mariner" is
a novel by Daniel Defoe published on April 25, 1719 and considered the founder of
the modern adventure novel. The novel is considered in history as one of the
greatest masterpieces of modern realism, although this realism from the realism
point of view of 800 or 900 is not properly so. This is a novel rich in information, it
should be remembered that in this period the purpose of the novels beyond that of
educating was also to inform, and the narrative could also be of adventure.
It's important that this text is based on several authors. Among the most famous
are: -J. Bunyan with The Pilgrim’s Progress and J. Milton with Paradise Lost. These
productions are united by a single theme: The theme of Providence, which is
enhanced through a biographical story that is proposed as an example to meditate.
In addition to the theme of providence, however, one of the other important
elements in this novel is time. Time is fundamental because, the whole novel
revolves around time. For the author in fact, the time the protagonist spent on the
island must be like real time, so the reader must be able to understand the time
Robinson is spending on the island. At the same time, also the protagonist Robinson
tries to keep under control the past time.

“After I had been there about Ten or Twelve Days, it came into my Thoughts, that I
should lose my Reckoning of Time for want of Books and Pen and Ink, and should
even forget the Sabbath Days from the working Days; but to prevent this I cut it
with my Knife upon a large Post, in Capital Letters, and making it into a great
Cross I set it up on the Shore where I first landed, viz. I came on Shore here on the
30th of September. 1659."
We can see how Robinson talks to us about days, as if he himself despite the
adventure manages to consider the time that has passed.
"Upon the Sides of this square Post I cut every Day a Notch with my Knife, and
every seventh Notch was as long again as the rest, and every first Day of the
Month as long again as that long one, and thus I kept my Kalander, or weekly,
monthly, and yearly reckoning of Time.”
As we can see there is a strong interest of the author to give the exact figure, and
not being able to give it, gives us an interval. This too, as we have said, is a stylistic
character typical of empirical culture, in which it is not only important to represent
reality, but also to offer reality the certainty that those who are defending are
worthy of trust.
When he's on the island, on the one hand there is the recovery of a religious
dimension, he tries to be reconciled with God and aspires to some form of spiritual
purification, at the same time Crusoe retrieves the tools that had on the ship and
builds a small world on that desert island, a small bourgeois world that is inspired by
to the reality from which it comes, and does this with an absolutely scientific
mentality, that is you see the influence of values and Baconian epistemology.

NICOLETA FRUNZA