DANIEL DEFOE (1660-1731)

ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719)

Alexander Selkirk, a Scotish castaway on the
Pacific island “Masa Tierra”, Chile
Crusoe – Caribbean island of Tobago, north of
the Venezuelan coast, near the mouth of the
Orinoco river
 Intertextual references

Literary allusions
• “A Historical Account of the Island Ceylon” (1659) by Robert
Knox
• “Cruising Voyage” (1712) by Woodes Rogers
Defoe makes a false document, presenting an account of
supposedly factual events:
Selkrik was abandoned on his own request while
Crusoe was shipwrecked;
Selkrik lived alone while
Cusoe found companions;
Selkirk spent four years on the island while
Crusoe stayed for 28 years on the desert island
 Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
fragments and texts from his life are
•
transposed into Robinson Crusoe
Comes from a family of Presbyterian dissenters; hence the surname Foe which he changed at the
age of thirty-five into Defoe to sound more aristocratic
• His father James Foe was a middle-class merchant
• witnessed as a boy the plague and the Great Fire of London, hence the themes of disasters and
survival in his fiction
• Raised in the spirit of Presbyterianism; hence the Protestant values are important in Robinson
Crusoe
• Travelled a lot as a hosiery salesman; hence journeying is an important theme in his fiction
• Criticized King James II and was expelled from England, after the Glorious revolution, he returned
• Went bankrupt and never fully recovered from his financial problems; money is an important
theme in his fiction
• Started writing poetry and continued with political satire The Shortest Way with Dissenters
• Publicly pilloried and jailed in Newgate prison; his prison experience is conveyed in Moll Flanders
• Often changed profession and worked as a merchant, poet, pamphleteer, spy and journalist; hence
in RC he is a sailor, a castaway , a captive, a plantation owner, a governor, and even a king
• Started writing fiction at the age fo 60
• Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• Moll Flanders (1722)
• Was a prolific writer who wrote more than
500 books and pamphlets
 Robinson Crusoe
Puritanism
• Defoe wrote books how to be a good Puritan:
• The New Family Instructor (1728)
• Religious courtship (1732)
• God the Guide of Youth (1685)by Timothy
Crusoe
• Religion:
Biblical references
the notion of Providence: divinely ordained fate
 Colonialism
• Defoe’s belief in the strict Puritan moral sense
and Protestant work ethics is conveyed, but
also his uncritical attitude towards slavery and
British colonialism
• Robinson is” the true prototype of the British
colonist” James Joyce
• The desert island is a replica of the British
society in terms of agriculture, technology and
political hierarchy
 Meticulous style
hands-on approach to life
• Precision, exactness, fact-based style; his
journal reflects his journalistic style;
• Quantities, numbers and measurements
• Defoe’s contribution to the development of
the realist fiction