The First English Novel

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) did not apply the term novel

to his writings; still, he lay down a set of narrative
conventions that assign the merit of the first novel
written in English to him.
Defoe’s Literary Activity
Defoe had various jobs before he started his literary
activity: entrepreneur, a pamphleteer, as a secret agent
and he often encountered serious financial problems. He
worked for several journals and newspapers.
Essay on Projects: proposals referring to social
improvement, emphasizing the importance of education.
The True-Born Englishman: is satire in verse.
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters: a pamphlet directed
against the Tories, because of which he was sentenced to
prison.
After being released, he started his own enterprise as a
journalist, founding the periodical entitled The Review.
Defoe’s Literary Activity
He turned to writing novels at an old age; he was
almost sixty when he wrote Robinson Crusoe, which
was followed by Moll Flanders, Journal of the Plague
Year, Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack and Roxana.
Defoe’s journalistic activity exercised a strong
influence on the style of his novels.
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe (1719): the prototype of the modern
English novel, though the author does not consider it a
novel; in The Author’s Preface the terms “story”, “account”,
“history” and “fact” are used.
The work is offered to the reader as an authentic material
of a series of real life experiences rather than fiction: “the
editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither
is there any appearance of fiction in it”.
anonymous author
The explicit purpose of the work is to instruct the reader,
to transmit the moral message, in accordance with the
literary fashion of the time.
Robinson Crusoe
Today it is mainly classified as belonging to youth
literature. However, this categorization cannot
diminish its importance as embodying a modern
myth, a milestone of modern culture and civilization.
In this respect, Robinson embodies the archetype of
the modern individual, a creator of civilization.
Robinson Crusoe
The story is inspired by a true adventure of a sailor
called Alexander Selkirk, who accompanied the
famous voyager Dampier in a journey around the
world.
As a consequence of the quarrel between the two,
Selkirk was left for disobedience on the uninhabited
island of Juan Fernandez.
He lived there for about five years when he was saved
by Captain Woodes, who wrote a book entitled A
Journey Around The World.
Storyline
The novel is a first-person account of the adventures
and experiences of the main hero. It starts by
presenting Robinson Crusoe, his birth and education,
his running away from home against his father’s will
in search of adventure. He makes several voyages,
during one of them he is caught by pirates, then sold
as a slave, he escapes and becomes a rich plantation
owner and slave-trader in Brazil. On his journey to
Africa he is shipwrecked and washed ashore on an
uninhabited island, where he spends approximately
twenty-eight years.
Storyline
His island experience is a short version of the history of
mankind. He goes through several phases. At the
beginning he sleeps on a tree, but gradually he has to
recreate the necessities of human life. He adapts himself
to the circumstances by building a raft, building his house,
making provisions and domesticating goats.
 In the second phase he explores the island: he builds a
boat and sails around the island. He discovers footprints in
the sand and is alarmed by the idea that there might be
cannibals visiting the island. In the third phase he rescues
Friday, civilizes him and makes plans for leaving the
island. Eventually he is rescued and returns to England.
Allegory
Robinson’s story follows the allegorical tradition
established by Bunyan’s novel, but here the allegory is
twofold.
Christian allegory, (the name Crusoe: allusion to the cross,
to Christianity);
modern allegory of civilization, starting from the
mythological origins of the human race, reaching a high
level of civilization (Crusoe: cruise, that is, exploration, sea
voyage, discovery).
In this sense, Providence and Reason are the two main
characters of the narrative allegory; the two powers, an
outer force and an inner drive that pave the way for the
individual’s survival and self-discovery.
Religious Allegory
conversion of an initially sinful individual, who used
to object to the authority of his father, but whose
experiences on the island turn him into a deeply
religious person.
Biblical inspiration; it resorts to the motif of the
prodigal son. During his experiences and his
continuous reflections on them, Robinson becomes a
devoted reader of the Bible, who interprets his
isolation as a form of repentance for his sinful past, as
a series of “miracles”, moral lessons offered by
Providence.
Religious Allegory
Providence: God’s worldly manifestation, as the
divine power that is directly “responsible” for one’s
fate. Robinson submits himself to God’s will and
appeals to Providence to help him face the difficulties.
He interprets every positive aspect of his situation as
the direct manifestation of God’s goodness and
mercy. His religious belief is very practical, based on
the conviction that God helps especially those who
help themselves – thus proving the influence of
Puritanism.
Worldly Allegory
Robinson Crusoe: representative of mankind, who alone,
relying on his own intellectual and physical capacities,
manages to dominate over the circumstances.
The island is the place where the individual undergoes a
series of experiences that contribute to his religious and
moral transformation, metamorphosis.
The individual capacities are tested; Robinson’s story of
survival testifies his capacity of creating a civilized life
similar to the one he left behind. Robinson passes the test
because of his strong will and powerful reason. He works
out a strategy of survival.
Enlightenment Ideas
Robinson: optimism and enthusiasm of the
Enlightenment.
embodiment of the Man of Reason, of the exemplary
man endowed with common sense, whose attitude is
for others to follow.
He is conscious of his intellectual capacities, he
considers that by careful observation and proper
judgment everybody can possess the skills he was
forced to develop in himself.
Enlightenment Ideas
As a practical philosopher of the Enlightenment, Robinson
considers that reason represents an essential value; it is the
basic condition of survival. His intellect unifies the qualities of
both an empiricist and a rationalist thinker; as an empiricist,
he gathers his observations and he relies on them and as a
rationalist, he is capable of deductive thinking too.
He is capable of drawing conclusions from his experiences. He
strives for understanding the world that surrounds him, and he
tries hard to overwhelm the fear of the unknown by reason.
He is an analytic mind, he keeps weighing the advantages and
disadvantages of his situation, and he seeks consolation in the
fact that it could be much worse, in the fact that there are a
great deal of positive things in his desperate situation.
Enlightenment ideas
In the struggle for life, reason must be completed by
consistent effort, Robinson’s tale suggests. The importance
of labour is highlighted throughout the narrative.
Robinson is the homo economicus, the active and
enterprising middle-class merchant, who needs and
creates material values and who praises the importance of
manual work.
the white colonizer: his relationship to Friday is that of
the master and servant, which is presented in a way that
subduing the primitive man seems to be the most proper
thing in the world. He regards Friday as his own rightful
property; in his view Friday has a black skin but a “white
soul”. Friday is taught to obey him; the first words that he
learns are “yes” and “master”.
Robinson’s Character
Besides his intelligence, his basic features that help him
survive are his adaptability and self-reliance.
He is a good organizer and he claims order; measures
and quantities are extremely important to him. He
measures the passage of time by means of a calendar;
dates are of particular interest to him. He is preoccupied
by coincidences: the day his journal starts with, 30th of
September 1659, stands for his birthday at the same time.
Coincidences are for him the evidence of an invisible
transcendental power that guides one’s fate. The loss of
time would mean the loss of the self.
Narration
Robinson Crusoe contains no chapters, it is a continuous
account of the narrator; it is only the journal that is
intercalated.
first-person narrative; this technique renders the hero’s
thoughts and feelings in an authentic way, in a simple,
matter-of-fact style, conveying the illusion of truth.
retrospective narrator, relating the experiences of his
past self. Because of the distance between the time of
narration and narrated time, the first-person narrator
struggles hard to express the past emotions in a proper
way.
Desert Island Fiction
Robinson Crusoe’s afterlife seems to be as significant
as the novel itself (this does not apply to the sequel
which appeared one year later, under the title of
Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; it does not
attain the level of the previous novel).
Defoe’s work represents a crucial moment in the
process of development of the novel form; it gave
birth to a literary genre still very popular today, called
Robinsonade or desert island fiction.
Desert Island Fiction
Inspired by the theme of Robinson, desert island fiction
chooses the scene of a distant island, which may serve
various literary purposes: it may represent the natural
environment untouched by man, the primitive setting
unspoilt by civilization, or the exotic, the unusual, the
imaginary scene, highly different from real life.
The notion of adventure is closely connected to this
setting, where the individual – or a group of people – have
to prove their capacities of adapting to the hostile
circumstances, based on self-knowledge and self-control
(e.g. in today’s television shows – reality shows, survival
shows – the desert island serves as the venue of ultimate
test).
Desert Island Fiction
The term Robinsonade is of German origin, and the French
term Robbinsonnades was also born, together with the series
of imitations that were published not much after Defoe’s
novel appeared.
One year after its publication, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was
translated into German, and several imitations followed:
 Johann Schnabel’s Die Insel Felsenburg (1731–43)
 Johann Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere (1779–80),
 Johann Wyss’s Der schweizerische Robinson (1812–27),
translated into English under the title of The Swiss Family
Robinson in 1814.
Desert Island Fiction
The topic became a children’s favourite in the
nineteenth century European literature:
J Taylor’s The Young Islanders (1841),
Jules Verne’s L’Île mystérieuse (1875),
R.M. Ballantine’s The Coral Island (1858),
R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883)
Desert Island Fiction
The topic survived into the twentieth century modernist
literature as well. The most notable works to be
mentioned are William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954),
Aldous Huxley’s Island (1966) and Michel Tournier’s
Vendredi (1967).
Instead of an individual, who – based primarily on his
intelligence –, is capable of attaining the level of a civilized
life, Golding’s dystopia presents the story of a group of
children, who, led by their instincts, destroy all values –
community values, individual values, basic human values –
that they still possessed at the moment of being cast on
the island. Golding’s vision reflects modern man’s
alienation, not only from the natural and cultural
environment, but also from his own self.
Desert Island Fiction
By a side-by-side reading of Robinson Crusoe and The Lord
of the Flies, the reader may grasp the distance between the
optimism of the Enlightenment and the dark pessimism
characteristic of modernism; between the views of the
constructing vs. destroying powers of man.
Defoe: the individual creating civilization; Golding: the
individual, being part of a community and bearing the
negative effects of civilization, is only capable of self-
destruction.
A more recent, utterly original rewriting of the theme,
from a female point of view: J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986).
Thank you for your attention!