Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

1. His life

English novelist & journalist, born in London, England, 1660, and died in

London, Apr. 26,1731. Like Pope, he never went to university, but he received a

good education in one of the best Dissenting academies. He started as a small

merchant & all his life his business underwent many ups & downs & yet he

was never beaten. Defoe also had a zest for politics. He wrote quite a number

of pamphlets on the current political issues.

2. His social outlook

As a member of the middle class, Defoe spoke for & to the members of his

class & his novels enjoyed great popularity among the less cultivated readers.

In most of his works, he gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy middle

class & showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, unfortunate poor.

3. His major works

Defoe is generally considered the first great realistic novelist in English

fiction. He based his stories on current events & materials, such as the maps &

logs of actual sea voyages, personal memoirs& historical or eyewitness

reports.

Perhaps his most popular novel is Robinson Crusoe (1719), an adventure

story based partly on the actual experience of a man who had been trapped on

a deserted island. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), sometimes considered

his best work, has such a colorful & detailed account of the London plague of

1664 & 1665 that it seems to have been written by an observer on the scene.

Defoe's third masterpiece, Moll Flanders (1722), is a lively novel tracing the

adventures of a female rogue. Told in the form of "confessions", the narrative

includes vivid descriptions of the courts, prisons, & other social institutions of

Defoe's era.

4. Characteristics of his works

Defoe was a very good story-teller. He had a gift for organizing minute

details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible& fascinating.

His sentences are sometimes short, crisp & plain, & sometimes long &

rambling, which leave on the reader on impression of casual narration. His

language is smooth, easy, colloquial & mostly vernacular. There is nothing

artificial in his language: it is common English at its best.

Robinson Crusoe《鲁滨逊漂流记》

(1) Background: a real incident; 1704, Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor,

was thrown onto a desolate island by the mutinous crew of his ship. He lived

there alone for 5 years. Defoe read about his adventures in a newspaper and

went to interview him to get first-hand information.

The first translation was done by Lin Shu in 1905 and became quite

popular in China.

(2) Plot: run away from home → become a sailor → a planter in Brazil →

to an uninhabited island because of shipwreck → made a living there all by

himself → save a negro named Friday who became his servant → back to

England → visit the remote island again and Friday was killed

Original name of the novel: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe

a picaresque novel with a little change (main character is different)

(3) (Discussion) Robinson Crusoe's characterization: typical of the rising

English bourgeois class, practical, diligent, a restless curiosity to know more

about the world and a desire to prove individual power in the face of social

and natural challenges; shrewd, care about money and good at managing;

courageous and intelligent to overcome all kinds of obstacles

(4) (Discussion) Theme: praising labor and man's courage and effort to

conquer nature, but at the same time he beautifies colonialism and slavery

(Friday)

(5) (Ask some questions about the excerpt)

What is the first thing mentioned in the excerpt done by Robinson (The

first paragraph) (keeping his calendar)

How Robinson made a home for himself step by step on the remote island

(Finding some useful thing from the wrecked ship - making a little pale

around his tent - making a hut with the roof - enlarging his cave and making it

like a storehouse - making a chair and a table - making large shelves - keep

everything in order

(6) (Discussion) Style: journalistic truth with many vivid details, simple and

plain sentence structure and language, first person point of view, natural

order in narration, making the story intimate to the readers and become

popular among lower classes

(1) Main idea

Robinson Crusoe is a romance by Defoe. In 1704 Alexander Selkirk, who

had run away to sea and joined a privateering expedition under Dampier, was

at his own request put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez. He

was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers. Defoe was probably familiar with

several versions of this tale, and added many incidents from his own

imagination to his account of Crusoe, presenting it as a true story. The

extraordinarily convincing account of the shipwrecked Crusoe’s successful

efforts to make himself a tolerable existence in his solitude first revealed

Defoe’s genius for vivid fiction; it has a claim to be the first English novel.

The author tells now, with the help of a few stores and utensils saved from

the wreck and the exercise of infinite ingenuity, Crusoe built himself a house,

domesticated goats, and made himself a boat. He describes the perturbation

of his mind caused by a visit of cannibals, his rescue from death of an

indigenous native he later names Friday, and finally the coming of an English

ship whose crew are in a state of mutiny, the subduing of the mutineers, and

Crusoe’s rescue.

(2) Analysis

In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naive

and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous

trials in his eventful life. The realistic account of the successful struggle of

Robinson single-mindedly against the hostile nature forms the best part of the

novel. Robinson here is a real hero: a typical 18th century English middle class

man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience

and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggle against the hostile

natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the

pioneer colonist. In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies

human labor and the Puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair and

are a source of pride and happiness. He toils for the sake of subsistence, and

the fruits of his labor are his own.

(3) Text explanation

节选一开始就讲到Robinson在构思建造安身之处，他认为大海旁边并不合适。接着，

他非常详细地说明了选择合适地方的理由。最后，他选定一个山丘侧面的一块平地，在那

儿依着山壁搭起了一个两层的帐篷，上面还蒙上了一层船上搬来的舱盖布，并在山壁上挖

出一个洞穴……

在做这些事情过程的间歇中，Robinson持枪外出巡视，发现荒岛上有山羊出没。但

山羊极其怕人，且奔跑速度极快，所以他只好爬上一块岩石上观察以等待时机……

就这样，Robinson有了固定的居住场所，还可以生火做饭，同时他还扩大了那个做

地窖用的洞穴。

《鲁宾逊漂流记》是英国文学史上第一部伟大的小说。笛福从新兴资产阶级和殖民主

义的立场出发，歌颂了在Robinson身上所体现出来的百折不挠、冒险进取的殖民精神。

Robinson是欧洲文学史上第一个资产阶级正面人物形象，读者也应该清醒地认识到他作

为资产阶级和殖民主义一员的局限性。

The themes of Robinson's Crusoe

a. man's struggles against nature

b. glorification of the bourgeois men who has the courage and will to face

hardship and determination to improve his livelihood.

c. Glorification of labor (Robinson lives on his own hands)

attack on the injustice of England's legal system. He was cheered by

people as a hero to defend himself.

Exercises:

1. People always say that: "As a member of the middle class, Defoe spoke

for and to the members of his class" .How do you understand this sentence?

Please explain it with the character of him.

参考答案：

1) In most of his works, Defoe gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy

middle class and showed his sympathy for the lower-class people. Robinson

Crusoe was such a character.

2) Robison goes out to sea, gets shipwrecked and marooned/landed on a

lonely island, struggles to live for 24 years there and finally is saved by a ship

and returns to England. During the period Robinson leads a harsh and lonely

life and survives by growing corps, taming animals, etc. growing from a naive

young man into a hardened man.

3) With a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy (精力充沛), courage

and persistence in overcoming difficulties（在克服困难方面持之以恒）, in

struggling against nature, Crusoe becomes the prototype / representative of

the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. （他是大英帝国缔造者的完美典范，同时

也是殖民者的先驱）．

4) In the novel, Defoe glorified human labor and the puritan fortitude

which the middle class praised highly, so he can be regarded as a spokesman

of the bourgeois. (P98-100)

2. Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe was a great success partly

because the protagonist was a real middle-class hero. Discuss Crusoe, the

protagonist of the novel, as an embodiment of the rising middle class virtues

in the mid-eighteenth century England.

Answers:

A. Social background: The Eighteenth Century England witnessed the

growing importance of the bourgeois or middle class.

a. The Industrial Revolution

b. The expansion of international markets;

c. Values/virtues/moral standards/...different from those of the feudal

aristocratic class -courageous, full of energy, hard working, practical,

resourceful, self-reliant, etc; thus

d. Literature should give/provide a realistic presentation of the life of the

common people; it should meet the demand/interest of the middle class

people.

B. Robinson Crusoe embodies the virtue of the middle class people.

a. Crusoe as an adventurous/courageous man full of energy and courage:

(example from the text):

b. Crusoe as a practical man: (example from the text);

c. Crusoe as a resourceful/self-reliant man: (example from the text);

d. Crusoe as a patient/persistent man: (example from the text);

e. And others.

3. Daniel Defoe describes ______ as a typical English middle class man of the

18th century, the very prototype of the empire builder or the pioneer colonist.

A. Tom Jones B. Gulliver

C. Moll Flanders D. Robinson Crusoe

4. Crusoe is the hero in the Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (also known as Robinson Crusoe) by _______.

A. Jonathan Swift B. Daniel Defoe

C. George Eliot D. D. H. Lawrence

5. Friday is a character in the novel _____.

A. Gulliver’s Travels B. Tom Jones

C. Robinson Crusoe D. Amelia

6. All of the following novels by Daniel Defoe are the first literary works

devoted to the study of problems of the lower-class people EXCEPT ____.

A. Robinson Crusoe B. Captain Singleton

C. Moll Flanders D. Colonel Jack