Pierre Richard & Nicolas Cazale in a film named, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (2003), based on the novel 'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe is the founder of the early bourgeois realistic novel and the English periodicals. He is remembered today as a prolific journalist and author, and has been lauded for his hundreds of fiction and nonfiction works, from political pamphlets to other journalistic pieces and fantasy-filled novels. Defoe's writing is always straightforward and vivid, with an astonishing concern for circumstantial detail. Defoe's great novels were not published under his name but as authentic memoirs, with the intention of gulling his readers into thinking his fictions true. Two excellent examples of his semi historical recreations are the picaresque adventure Moll Flanders (1722), the story of a London prostitute and thief, and an account of the 1665 great plague in London entitled A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).
There was seemingly no political topic that Defoe was unwilling or unable to comment upon, from local battles over religious conformity to the contested succession to the Spanish throne. Many of his writings were devoted to issues arising from the Glorious Revolution, including works that justify the acceptance of William as king as well as many on the Pretender and the Jacobites. Not only could he write intelligently and persuasively on each topic but he was able to argue from many different points of view, tailoring the style to his target audience.
In 1719, Daniel Defoe tried his hand at another kind of literature - fiction, and wrote the novel which brought him world-wide fame -'The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'. In this novel, Defoe uses the tale of a shipwrecked soldier to criticize society. Mainly, the story of Robinson Crusoe is based on a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk who lived alone on the island of Juan Fernandez for over four years until he was rescued. In the island setting, Defoe was able to show what is necessary for the formation of a utopian society.
This depiction, however, differentiated from later writers such as Huxley who's vision is regarded as a classic examination of modern values and utopian thinking takes a piece of paradise and makes it a sovereign state. He is king of vale, lord of the country, squire of the manor. While politicians argue about the best way to create a 'perfect' society, Defoe says that the only way that it happens in the presence of everything except people, creating irony.
This was a very controversial topic in England at the time. Many citizens and people of certain religions were being persecuted because of their political beliefs. Defoe, however, believed that religious freedom and political freedom was a right that every member of society should have, so his entry into the world of politics was perhaps inevitable. Defoe was never content to remain for long in the realm of impersonal thought; he had a dangerous way of applying his mind to persons and parties.
Defoe uses first person narrative as a method of narration. This method makes the relation between the narrator and the reader very close. The reader receives all information through Crusoe's narration. This method makes the novel more authentic and believable. The reader receives information through the speech of the hero himself. The narrator is the one who has gone through the experience which he talks about. Thus, it is first-hand information.
Defoe also uses details of navigational information. Crusoe describes how he sets sail on his first voyage and the storm which strikes the ship. During the storms, two ships have cut their masts by the board. Two other ships are driven from the anchors. Moreover, he describes his voyages from Brazil to Guinea. The captain of the ship finds that they are in about eleven degrees north altitude. Furthermore, he describes how he makes a raft and a boat. This navigational information creates a realistic atmosphere which make Crusoe's story authentic.
In Robinson Crusoe, the narrator develops to form an optimistic outlook towards an unfortunate situation, and, thus, creates a utopia for himself both mentally and physically. By doing this, he, essentially, broke through the mold in which both British society and his parents had set for him when becoming stranded with only his thoughts and fears.
Crusoe finds the power to overcome a hostile world of hunger and sickness, animal and human brutality, even the power to overcome his most dangerous adversary, himself. In doing so, Defoe is really criticizing the society in which he lived saying that the only truly peaceful and loving society is that which contains one person, though, as in Robinson Crusoe, maybe this is not the society in which humans are capable of living in. Just as Crusoe eventually saw his situation more optimistically, Defoe is saying that a society which is less critical of itself is one that is closer to utopia.
Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665 remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, 'A Journal of the Plague Year' walks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. In meticulous and unsentimental detail it renders the daily life of a city under siege; the often gruesome medical precautions and practices of the time; the mass panics of a frightened citizenry; and the solitary travails of Defoe's narrator, a man who decides to remain in the city through it all, chronicling the course of events with an unwavering eye. Defoe's Journal remains perhaps the greatest account of a natural disaster ever written.
'The True-Born Englishman' is a satirical poem published in 1701 by Daniel Defoe defending the then King of England William, who was Dutch-born, against xenophobic attacks by his political enemies, and ridiculing the notion of English racial purity. It quickly became popular. In The True-Born Englishman, Defoe chides the English for their hatred of foreigners, pointing out that England was created by centuries of foreign invaders. He then itemizes the faults of the English character, including stupidity, drunkenness and ingratitude with scathing wit.
In the preface to this collection of poems and prose tracts, Defoe urges readers not to be duped by pirated versions of his works, which leave out some works and add other works that are not his, and which in many Places invert the Sense and Design of the Author. For, he says, "it is not because of any Opinion I have of the Value of my own Performances, nor from the Fondness of appearing in Print that I have consented to this Publication" but rather because he thought it necessary to provide a corrective to the injustices done him.
Daniel Defoe died of comatose lethargy in Ropemaker's Alley on April 24, 1731, while hiding from a creditor who had commenced proceedings against him. Death is not the end of an Artist. Defoe will be remembered among the readers forever.
The writer is a freelance columnist
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