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DANIEL DEFOE (1660- 1731) - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The Review - periodical - his greatest achievement
      - well-paid intellectual
- - - - the voyage story of a captain who becomes a pirate
  - - - PLOT
        
        Born in Newgate prison in London (she was the daughter of a thief), when her mother is transported to Virginia she is brought up in the house of the Mayor of Colchester. At the age of 14 she is sent into the service of a rich family and is seduced by the eldest son. She then goes through 5 marriages, children and becomes a prostitute and a thief to survive. Deported to Virginia, she works hard to become a rich plantation owner. Finally, she goes back to England where she leads a respectable life and she recollects her experiences as mistakes to be avoided.
      - SETTING
        
        Description of urban society
        
        crime, lack of provision for orphans
        
        theft and prostitution as only hope for a widowed woman
        
        Puritan terms: Moll rejects emotional experience (lots of her children disappear) as an impediment to the rational accumulation of capital
      - STYLE
        
        retrospective first-person narration
        
        simple and direct style
        
        aim: reader's identification
        
        documents (letters, memorandums, hospital bills) to increase realism
        
        counting, measuring, pricing - things are evaluated according to the wealth they represent and the social status they imply
      - CHARACTER
        
        restless and individualist, she is Crusoe's female counterpart
    - - a repenting pickpocket who ends up leading a respectable life
  - - - PLOT
        
        Robinson Kreutznaer (German father, English mother) leaves his middle-class family to travel around the world. First voyage: Guinea. Second one: captured by Moorish pirates and rescued by a Portuguese ship that brings him to Brazil, from where he sets out on a voyage to Africa to get more slaves for his plantation. During the journey he is shipwrecked on a desert island and remains there for 28 years. There, he gradually re-builds a society. In his diary he records his experiences and debates ideas about himself, the reader and God. After 12 years, he finds a human footprint and some human bones and flesh left by cannibals. He tries to attack them, but they escape and leave a captive, whom he calls Friday (after the day of his rescue). Robinson and Friday attack other cannibals landed on the island and free 2 prisoners, one of whom turns out to be Friday's father. At the end, Robinson returns to England and discovers that his plantation in Brazil made him rich.
      - CHARACTERS
        
        Robinson
        
        restless, transgressive, pragmatic, individualist, objective, rational
        
        he creates a society that instead of being an alternative to the English one is an exaltation of 18th-century England (productiveness, individualism)
        
        a society where God is the cause of everything but the man can shape his destiny through action
        
        Friday
        
        symbol of the colonised
        
        Robinson teaches him
        
        Western culture
        
        to read the Bible
        
        to call him master
      - STYLE
        
        objective approach
        
        clear details
        
        simple language
        
        first-person narration
        
        references to God
        
        Robinson prays to be freed from sin rather than to be rescued from the island
        
        conflict between economic motivation and spiritual salvation
        
        Puritan answer: do the best to increase the gifts God had given them as a sign of His grace
      - Film by Rod Hardy and George Miller (1997) with Pierce Brosnan - Robinson Crusoe on Mars, by Byron Haskin (1964)
      - The South-African novelist J.M. COETZEE (1940, -) wrote the novel Foe (1986) in which he re-tells the story of Robinson
        
        Susan Barton, the protagonist, is cast upon Cruso's island by rebellious mariners. After Cruso, Susan and Friday are rescued, Cruso dies on the way back to England, Friday and Susan look for Daniel Foe to publish their story. Foe turns out to be a ghost writer who is hiding from creditors. So they go to Bristol on foot to find a ship that will return Friday to Africa, but they only find dishonest people who want to re-sell him as a slave. Friday has his tongue cut out, by a slaver or by Cruso himself (not clear).
  - - - a high-society woman who exploits her beauty to obtain what she wants
  - - - the basis for the realistic novel
      - he wrote fictional autobiographies with details and memories
      - preceded by a preface by the author
      - a series of episodes about a single hero
      - lack of a coherent plot
      - retrospective first-person narration, characters presented from the inside
      - characters' isolation
        
        physically
        
        Robinson Crusoe
        
        socially
        
        Moll Flanders