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Robinson Crusoe

Table of Contents

-> The Book

-> Plot Summary

-> Main Character Robinson Crusoe

-> Major Themes

#Achievement and Improvement

#The Ambivalence of Mastery

#Politics

#Religion/ Self-awareness

-> Conclusion

-> Bibliography

Robinson Crusoe –

the book

The book

  • published in 25 April 1719

-> five further editions

  • remarkable success of a highly controversial author
  • picked up by Rosseau and Marx
  • published at a time of rising interest in voyage literature/ adventure stories
  • status of a novel? -> draws together features of the genres of romance, memoir, fable, allegory, etc.

Double click to edit

Cover Page

Cover Page

  • shipwreck, piracy, wonder, nautical details
  • extended titles as promotional device
  • reference to real-life experiences of Alexander Selkirk (Scot mariner)
  • Defoe: writing as business of transformation not imitation -> recreation of castaway tales

The Island

Plot Summary

Plot Summary

2. Voyage to the

coast of Africa

-captured by Moorish pirates

-> slavery in Sallee

-Crusoe and Xury manage to escape after two years

-they sail down the African coast

Town of York, England, 1651

-Wish to go to sea instead of studying law

-struggles

-fear of embarrassment

1st September 1651:

1. Voyage to London

Travel to London

-> shipwreck but survival

->mixed thoughts

Brazil

-acquires a plantation and prospers

-buys himself a slave and a servant

-embarks on slave-gathering expedition to West Africa (1st September 1659)

30th September 1659:

Coast of Trinidad

19th December 1686:

Crusoe leaves the island

1674:

-a single man's footprint on the sand

1684:

-Crusoe rescues Friday

-they free Friday's father and a Spaniard

-shipwrecked off

-establishes a life consisting of spiritual reflection and practical measures to survive

->keeps a calendar and a journal

->reads the bible and prays regularly

->sows and cultivates barely and rice

->tames goats

11th June 1687:

Crusoe arrives in England

1688:

Crusoe arrives in Lisbon

Travel to England

->sells his estate in Brazil

->marries

->takes two nephews into care

1694:

embarks on voyage to the coast of Trinidad with one of his nephews

ROBINSON CRUSOE

Main Character

Before the shipwreck

Starting point

->young middle-class man

->headstrong, rebellious, disobedient

->adventurous - terrified

->decisive - fluctuating

->reflective mind

->afraid to embarrass himself

->willing to acquire knowledge

->ambitious for wealth

->self-reliant

Merchant

Slavery

-> reflective mind

->religious fears

->religious?

->modest

->hopes and doubts

SALLEE

Stay in Brazil

Brazil

->willing to acquire skills

->colonialist mindset

->courageous and attentive

ISLAND

->grateful

„I was now landed, and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life was saved in a case wherein there was some minutes before scarce any room to hope“

->still able to see the good in the bad

->attachment towards religion

->sensitive

->organized

->reflections and appreciation

->eager and ambitious

->power of endurance

ISLAND

->curious

->indifference to wife

->interest in possession and power

->fair treatment`?

Physical Appearance

Physical Appearance

->great high shapeless cap (goat's skin) with a flap

->short jacket of goat skin

->skirts coming down to the middle of thighs

->a pair of open-kneed breeches

->buskins

-> two belts of goat's skin

->two pouches under left arm

->a basket at his back

-over his head a goat-skin umbrella

Themes

Major Themes

The novel can be read as “[…] an exotic adventure story; a study of solitary consciousness; a parable of sin, atonement, and redemption; a myth of economic individualism; a displaced or encoded autobiography; an allegory of political defeat; a prophecy of imperial expansion – yet none of these explanations exhausts it.“ (p. vii)

Achievement

and

Improvement

Achievment and Improvement

  • the novel as an expression of belief in man’s duty to study, explore, alter and improve nature

-> a model of initiative and invention

  • Crusoe: practical, business-like character
  • story of personal achievement and improvement

-> a model of the industrious, applying, improving English man.

The Ambivalence of Mastery

  • most intriguing question of the book
  • Crusoe: moral indifference, not aware of his blindspots
  • change from slave master to slave
  • unfair treatment of Friday
  • paradox: Crusoe as a tyrannized and the tyrant
  • contradiction between slavery as a practice and the ideology of liberty

Politics

Politics

  • resemblance between Crusoe’s character and Defoe himself: psychological, emotional, and spiritual connections
  • Defoe: advocate of colonialism …

... always to be considered in the context of the time

  • Defoe: “Period of Trampling on Laws, Oppressing of Subjects, Invading, Property, Persecution for Conscience, and Suspending the Laws.“ p.xxxi

  • Defoe vs. Crusoe

-maritim and commercial empire vs. empire founded on territory expansion, economic exploitation, and racial subjection

-> postcolonial criticism

Religion/ Self-awareness

  • moral tale: right and wrong ways to live
  • Puritan pattern:

-> disobedience-punishment-repentance-deliverance

  • Crusoe is in an ongoing struggle: inward grace vs. outward temptation

-> linked to Defoe’s own struggle

  • criticism: obsessive self-analysis and religious hypocrisy combined with colonialist thinking

Summarizing Quote

“My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own mere property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected: I was absolute lord and lawgiver, they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me.“ (p.203)

Conclusion

“My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own mere property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected: I was absolute lord and lawgiver, they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me.“ (p.203)

Conclusion –

Last Thoughts

Conclusion

  • quote illustrates the mindset of the time

->colonialist, self-righteous, autocratical way of thinking.

  • multifaceted novel: mind the context of the time and the parodic elements
  • lots of political and religious allusions
  • means to process experiences and to make a stand against politics, world affairs

Bibliography

Bibliography/ Register of Illustrations

  • Defoe, Daniel, and James Kelly (2008): Robinson Crusoe. Oxford: OUP. Print.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica (2018): Robinson Crusoe. Web. 20. November 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Robinson-Crusoe-novel

Table of Illustrations

  • https://danassays.wordpress.com/encyclopedia-of-the-essay/defoe-daniel/robinson-crusoe-by-daniel-defoe/daniel-defoe-robinson-crusoe-2/
  • https://breitengradlaengengrad.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/juan-fernandes-insel-ganz-kopie-2.jpg
  • https://www.stepmap.de/karte/robinson-crusoe-insel-5-tage-pY8gdepl3M
  • https://www.britannica.com/topic/Robinson-Crusoe-novel

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