Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is the typical middle class young man who represents all the
middle class of that period. Robinson Crusoe is the first novel of Daniel Defoe. It is
about the story of a young man who decides to leave his family at the age of 19 to
explore the world, to get his own fortune. He lives several adventures, he is
captured by pirates, but then he manages to escape thanks to a Portuguese ship
that brings him to Brazil, where he starts a plantation. In order to grow his
plantation he decides to move to Africa, to get more slaves. But on the way back he
is shipwrecked on a desert island, because of a great storm and he will be on this
island for 28 years. He starts writing a diary and he builts his habits to organize his
life on this remote island. But his organization is the mirror of the English social
organization because he will built a house with a fence, typical of the English
cottages (around a cottage there is a fence to separate a cottage from another one).
Moreover he feels a typical English man who settles a new territory, because he has
discover it and he wants to be the owner. In fact at first he frees a man from the
cannibals. This man is called by Robinson Friday, because it was the day he met him
for the first time (Robinson has a diary and he writes the day, the year, in order not
to lose the time which was passing). Then he is rescue from a boat who was passing
there and in England he realises that his plantation in Brazil had grown and he has
become rich thanks to it.

Robinson is introduced in this kind of novel, the utopian novel, which deals with
wonderful places, a paradise where the characters can only feel good. So the island
is the perfect place where Robinson can show his qualities, in which the English
spirits come out. They are materialistic, based on reason, pragmatic and also
important to nature, for example the idea of a self-made man who can be able to
realize what he wants, to colonize, to settle, in fact Robinson is able to organize his
life, to change an isolated island into his own kingdom. He is prototipe of the English
colonizer to dominate nature because he change nature in order to recieve food. He
also focuses on the idea that providence has helped him. Robinson lives religion for
his own and, since he was a puritan, he reads the Bible and he finds confort because
he is persuated that is God who has taken him in that situation for a particular
reason that he has to discover. Maybe to find more inside. So he has to pray and to
work in that island. However he is never desperate because religion gives him the
strenght, but also the reason because desperation means that his emotions are
overwhelming him. But people of Enlightment are guided by reason, not by
emotions. Reason has a great importance because only through it he can achieve his
goals. He never cries, he never writes in his diary that he is desperate. He only writes
what he does or he will do everyday.

The novel can be considered as the exaltation of the ideas of 18th century: mobility,
materialism, pragmatism, productivity, individualism, self-confidence, typical
elements of the century, of the tradesman, who is able to face his destiny and to win
all the difficulties through his intelligence and his reason.
 JONATHAN SWIFT

He was born in Dublin, from an English family who returned to England at the time
of the Glorious revolution. Swift became secretary to Sir temple, a whig statesman,
and thanks to him, he started writing satirical works:

The battle of the book, in 1704, which deal with an ancient and modern
literature, where he supported classics and criticized with irony the self
satisfaction of modern scholarship, criticism, poetry;

A tale of tub, in the same year, about religious parties, superstition of

Catholics, fanaticism of dissenters;

He returned to Ireland : he became an Anglican priest and Dean of dublin’s st

patrick’s cathedral in 1713. He started writing pamphlets, to denounce the injustice
that Ireland suffered from, like The drapier’s letters, where he assail government’s
proposal for a new coinage. In 1726 he wrote his masterpiece, Guliver’s travels and
in 1729, a modest proposal, about the poverty of the irish people. He died in 1745,
after he discovered to be affected by the decay of mental faculties.

He is considered one of the most controversial english writers. He got a conservative

attitude about politics and society, he didn’t express the optimism of his edge, he
hated the man, known as “an animal capable of reason”, which was an instrument
to use properly and not in a too intensive way. Swift used irony and satire, and
thanks to his simple style and diction he achieved the effect of parody too.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS = FAIRY TALE + CRITICAL BOOK

It is a critical analyses to negativity of Enlightenment, the abuse of what

philosophers said.

Fairy tale for children = funny experiences, they have fun reading it. There are also
cartoons about Gulliver’s travels.

( deeply speaking : ) AIM = to enhance the reader towards reflection

Gulliver starts being a men of the middle class. He was faithful to his society, he
believed in the values of the enlightenment as intelligence, use of reason, science.
He was a doctor, so a man of science.
He was a surgeon so a real men of science and he started his voyages as a trip, just
to admire and visiting and know other countries, traditions, habits. The perfect
English man that want to export his knowledge, as also Italian, in order to
understand new people, to exchange ideas as a traditional Britannic habit.

He goes in four different parts of the world, however they don’t exist.

The first trip is in Lilliput, a town on the coast where Gulliver is find on the shore, he
shipwrecked there.

It’s a fantasy land where very small people live and where Gulliver is a giant : he
considers himself more important than them, however he learns their language,
their costumes, their istitutions and he is well considered by the King.

Lilliputians surround Gulliver to see what he has in his pockets, looking his hair, his
trousers, so in general his aspect.

So the situations is so ridiculous because Gulliver was so tall and when he starts to
have relation with lilliputians they admire and accept him. They need him because
they are in war with another country in front of Lilliput.

Since they fought by boats he could be able to walk into the sea and be faster than
them and destroy by his hands the enemy.

The funniest thing is that he always helps the Lilliputians : for instance, one day a
part of the castle was burning, they ran randomly, because they couldn’t know how
to turn off , so in that moment Gulliver started to urinate over the fire and by it he
could put them out and saved them.

This let understand that he felt superior to them.

It’s the typical feature of the man of this age,he felt proud to be a giant, because it
means that he is superior to the others.

So in the first trip Gulliver shows all the English features: he is full and proud of
himself, after the seven year war England felt superior, expecially against France.

SECOND TRIP : He went away from this fairy island and came back to England to
start another trip in another country: Brobdignag, a country located in Alaska, where
people were giants, the opposite situation, so Gulliver now is tiny and really small
that he becomes the king’s pet in order to enjoy the Queen, put into a cage.
However the king understood that he was smart so Gulliver survived thanks to use
his intelligence, as the idea of that age. In fact he was able to be taken back to
England by a ship, thanks to his reason.

The second travel replace the idea of ridiculous because Swift passed from Gulliver
as a giant to Gulliver as a little being with a giant that feels superior to him and
Gulliver could understand what inferior means.

The giants represent the same behaviour, attitude, that Gulliver had in the first trip.

There are two points of view: once is the typical idea of a English man, that is
superior to people from another country and on the other hand there is the idea of
inferiority that Lilliputians felt before thanks to him. So this means that usually
people don’t have perception about their actions, so we have to be more critical
with ourself and pay attention.

The change of view means also that English people aren’t perfect, so if in the first
trip we can talk about proud, in the second there is greed.

The third island is a floating island called Laputa, inhabited by crazy scientists, that
want to do experiments because they want to be considered important scientists
that have discovered something.

So they do crazy experiments, for example one of them wants to find food to eat
from escrements.

In this island Swift wants to satirize the scientific community in Britain and the Royal
society, an academy in London where all scientists and philosophers met and discuss
to exchange ideas about what they discover.

The last trip. It let him understand the nature of human kind, in the land of
Houyhnhnms, whose inhabitants are intellectual horses, called YAHOO, who have
the human intelligence but also the instinct of animals.

The horses don’t want Gulliver to stay there, and sent him back to England, where
he understood he can’t stand in that society because the once created by horses is
better than Laputa.

He would like to come back. He preferred living in a stable with the smell of the
horses because it reminds him how to behave, in fact he leaves his family to live in
the stable, that’s a source of changing if we don’t abuse in use of reason, as Hitler in
the second world war, where the only right position was his own. So you can’t be
only a scientist but you have to adapt your mood to situations, because human kind
is made up of reason but also instinct and feelings and perceptions.

Gulliver as Robinson tells his experiences in the first person in a prose style.