Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes.

---- Daniel Defoe  

Daniel Defoe & his Daniel Defoe & his Robinson CrusoeRobinson Crusoe

• Daniel Defoe（ the author’s pen name ） (c.1659(1661) – 24 April 1731) Daniel Foe (his original name)

• an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer [pæmfli‘tiə]   n. 小册子作者、檄文执笔者 who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe.

• Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents [prəpəunənt]n. 支持者，拥护者 of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in Britain, and is even referred to by some as one of the founders of the English novel.

• A prolific[prəlifik]a. 多产的；多子嗣的and versatile writer, he wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets [pæmflit]n. 小册子 , and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural).

• He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.

Early life

• Daniel Foe was probably born in the parish  教区 of St. Giles Cripplegate London. (Daniel later added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux.) Both the date and the place of his birth are uncertain with sources often giving dates of 1659 to 1661. In Daniel's early life he experienced first-hand some of the most unusual occurrences in English history: in 1665, 70,000 were killed by the plague 瘟疫 .

Interior of St. Giles Cripplegate

Cripplegate

• Cripplegate was a city gate in London Wall and a name for the region of the City of London outside the gate. It was almost entirely destroyed by bombing in World War II and today is the site of the Barbican Estate and Barbican Centre( 英国伦敦的巴比肯艺术中心 ) . The name is preserved in the church of St Giles Cripplegate, and in the Cripplegate ward of the City, while a street named Cripplegate lies slightly to the north of the site of the wall.

Cripplegate

• On top of all these catastrophes, the Great Fire of London (1666) hit Defoe's neighbourhood hard, leaving only his and two other homes standing in the area. In 1667, when Defoe was probably about seven years old, a Dutch fleet sailed up the River Thames and attacked London.

Great Fire of London

• All of this happened before Defoe was around seven years old, and by the age of about thirteen, Defoe's mother had died. Defoe was educated in a Dissenting Academy at Newington Green run by Charles Morton (later vice-president of Harvard University), and is believed to have attended the church there.

Dissenting Academy

• English Dissenters [dɪsɛntɚ] 持异议者 ; 持不同意见者 were English Christians who separated from the Church of England They opposed State interference in religious matters, and founded their own communities in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

Newington Green

• Newington Green is an open space in Islington 伦敦伊斯林顿 , London that gives its name to the surrounding area. The Newington Green area is roughly bounded by Ball's Pond Road to the south, Petherton Road to the west, the line Green Lanes-Mathias Road to the north, and Boleyn Road to the east. Newington Green is covered by the N16 postcode

Newington Green

Harvard University

• Although Defoe was a Christian himself, he decided not to become a dissenting minister, and entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery ['həuʒəri] , general woollen goods, and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship (as well as civet cats 灵猫 to make perfume), he was rarely free of debt.

civet cats

• In 1684, Defoe married a woman by the name of Mary Tuffley, receiving a dowry [daʊri] 嫁妆 of £3,700. With his recurring 经常的 , 续生的 , 再发生的 debts, their marriage was most likely a difficult one. They had eight children, six of whom survived. In 1685, he joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion, but gained a pardon by which he escaped the Bloody Assizes of Judge George Jeffreys.

George Jeffreys

• In 1692, Defoe was arrested for payments of £700 (and his civets were seized), though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000. His laments [ləmɛnt] 挽歌 were loud, and he always defended unfortunate debtors, but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest.

• Following his release, he probably traveled in Europe and Scotland and it may have been at this time that he traded in wine to Cadiz 加的斯 , Porto 波尔图 ( 葡萄牙港市 ) , and Lisbon 里斯本（葡萄牙首都） .

• By 1695 he was back in England, using the name "Defoe", and serving as a "commissioner of the glass duty", responsible for collecting the tax on bottles. In 1696, he was operating a tile and brick factory in what is now Tilbury 蒂尔伯里 , Essex 艾塞克斯 ( 英国英格兰东南部的郡 ) and living in the parish of Chadwell St Mary 查德韦尔圣玛丽 .

Pamphleteering and prison

• Defoe's first notable publication was An Essay upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698, he defended the right of King William III to a standing army during disarmament 解除武装 ; 裁军 after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years' War (1688–97). His most successful poem, (1697), defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirizing the English claim to racial purity.

• In 1701, Defoe, flanked 侧面有 by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of quality, presented the Legion's Memorial to the Speaker of the House of Commons, later his employer, Robert Harley. It demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France.

• Defoe‘s pamphleteering [pæmflɪtɪr] 写小册子 and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory [pɪləri] 颈手枷 on July 31, 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled ; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church, purporting to argue for their extermination 消灭 . In it he ruthlessly [ruθlɪslɪ] 无情地 ; 冷酷地 ; 残忍地 satirised [sætəraɪz] 嘲讽 both the High church 高教会派 Tories 托利派 and those Dissenters 持不同政见者 who hypocritically practiced so-called "occasional conformity", such as his Stoke Newington 斯托克纽英顿 neighbour Sir Thomas Abney.

Daniel Defoe in the pillory, 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe

• However, according to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious [nɑkʃəs] 有毒的 objects, and to drink to his health. The historicity of this story, however, is questioned by most scholars, although the scholar J. R. Moore later said that “no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence 卓越 ;

著名 among his fellow men.”Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald and famous Royal Navy officer, was sentenced to the pillory, but was excused for fear his popularity would cause a riot.

Later life and works

• The extent and particulars of Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory ( 英国保守党 ) fall in 1714 to the publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 is widely contested( 提出异议 ) . Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute author-less tracts to him in his self-vindicatory ([vɪndɪkətɔri, -tori]  惩罚的 , 报复的 )

•From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he is now famous (see below). In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conduct manuals, including Religious Courtship (1722), The Complete English Tradesman (1726), and The New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such as The Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) and Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725), and works on the supernatural, like The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magick (1726), and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727).

• His works on foreign travel and trade include A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) and Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis (1728). Perhaps his greatest achievement alongside the novels is the magisterial A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

• Daniel Defoe died on April 24, 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, London, where his grave can still be visited.

• Defoe is known to have used at least 198 separate pen names during his lifetime of writing.

Memorial to "Daniel De-Foe", Bunhill Fields, City Road, London.

List of novels by Daniel Defoe• 1719 Robinson Crusoe 《鲁滨逊漂流记》• 1720 Captain Singleton 《辛格尔顿船长》• The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe 《鲁滨逊

漂流续记》• 1720 Memoirs of a Cavalier 《骑士回忆录》• 1720 Duncan campell 《邓肯坎贝尔》• 1722 A Journal of the Plague Year 《大疫年纪事》• 1722 Moll Flanders 《摩尔 · 费兰德斯》• 1722 Colonel Jack 《杰克上校》• 1724 Roxana:The Fortunate Mistress 《罗克萨娜》• The Family Instructor 《家教》 （ They clearly manifest Defoe's deep concern for the poor in his society. T

hey are the first literary works devoted to the study of the problems of the lower-class people.)

Robinson Crusoe —— the greatest work of Daniel Defoe

The Brief Introduction:• The novel Robinson

Crusoe was composed when Daniel Defoe was nearly 60 years old, which was first published on April 25, 1719. It is sometimes considered to be the first novel in English.

Robinson Crusoe is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

The story was likely influenced by the real life Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived four years on the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile. However, the details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco river, and in sight of the island of Trinidad.

• The book is an expression of the bourgeois qualities of individualism and private enterprise. Robinson is a new man - a man sure of himself and sure of being able to establish himself anywhere in the world. He is a man of a new age, in which doubt and uncertainty are replaced by hope and confidence. Robinson is the enterpriser of his age. He is ready to command nature, his enemy, and to found his colony beyond the seas. He is a merchant-adventurer, interested in material profits. He is a colonist, the empire builder.

The Brief Introduction

The Writing Background

The novel is based on a true story a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk, is a fictional autobiography of the title character, a castaway( 漂流者） who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela( 委内瑞拉） , encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document" and gives a realistic frame story.

Book on Alexander Selkirk

A false document is a literary technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction. By inventing and inserting documents that appear to be factual, an author tries to create a sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief for a work of art. The goal of a false document is to fool an audience into thinking that what is being presented is actually a fact

A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc.) employs a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictive narrative or organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. The frame story leads readers from the first story into the smaller one within it.

The Summary of the Story

• The thought of adventures upon the high sea sprung out in Robinson’s mind

Robinson Crusoe was born in 1632 in the city of York, England. His father, a German immigrant, married a woman whose name was Robinson, and his real name was Robinson Kreutznaer, but due to the natural corruption of languages, the family now writes their name "Crusoe." He was the third son; his oldest brother was killed in a war, and the next son simply disappeared.

When Robinson Crusoe first had an urge to go to sea, his father lectured him upon the importance of staying home and being content with his "middle station" in life. His father maintained that the "middle station had the fewest disasters and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind." After his father expressly forbade him to go to sea, and, furthermore, promised to do good things for him if he stayed home, for another whole year, Robinson Crusoe stayed at home, but he constantly thought of adventures upon the high sea.

• The vicissitude of the expedition on their way

After a tumultuous journey that sees his ship wrecked by a vicious storm, his lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey too ends in disaster as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates, and Crusoe becomes the slave of a Moor( 摩尔人） . He manages to escape with a boat and a boy named Xury; later, Crusoe is befriended by the Captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa. The ship is en route( 在途中） to Brazil. There, with the help of the captain, Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation.

The Summary of the Story

Years later, he joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30, 1659. His companions all die. Having overcome his despair, he fetches arms, tools, and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks.

• The tough life on the island

He proceeds to build a fenced-in （有栅栏的） habitation near a cave which he excavates himself. He seeks to survive by growing corn and rice , drying grapes to make raisins for the winter months, learning to make pottery, using tools created from stone and wood which he harvests on the island and adopting a small parrot.

The Summary of the Story

Years later, he discovers native cannibals( 食人者） who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; and indeed, when a prisoner manages to escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.

After another party of natives arrives to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday‘s father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards（西班牙人） shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.

Plaque( 牌匾） in Queen’s Gardens, Hull-the former Queen’s Dock from which Crusoe sailed- showing him on his island.

Crusoe standing over Friday after he frees him from cannibals( 食人者） .

The reasons for cannibalism ：

• As sanctioned by a cultural norm

• By necessity in extreme situations of famine

• Caused by insanity or social deviancy

The Summary of the Story

• Back to England and go through the last adventure

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have taken control of the ship and intend to maroon their former captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship‘s captain strike a deal, in which he helps the captain and the loyalist sailors retake （夺回） the ship from the mutineers, whereupon they intend to leave the worst of the mutineers on the island. Before they leave for England, Crusoe shows the former mutineers how he lived on the island, and states that there will be more men coming.

Crusoe leaves the island December 19th, 1686, and arrives back in England June 11th, 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead and there was nothing in his father’s will for him. Crusoe then departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him a large amount of wealth. In conclusion, he takes his wealth over land to England to avoid traveling at sea. Friday comes with him and along the way they endure one last adventure together as they fight off hundreds of famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees （比利牛斯山脉） .

Pyrenees 比利牛斯山脉

Significance Of The Story Robinson Crusoe is a real hero.

He almost has everything needed for becoming a successful man, such as his excellent creativity, great working capacity, courage, and persistence in overcoming obstacles.

However, Robinson Crusoe is not a perfect man. He also has shortcomings. He was such a coward when he encountered a storm the first time. He swore and repented 忏悔 yet ate his words and sailed on after the storm.

By showing Robinson’s shortcomings, Daniel Defoe made Robinson a real person. After all, no one is perfect. Robinson Crusoe can not only lead the ambitious ones to success, but also guide average people to face up to life. This is the significance of the study of Robinson Crusoe.

—— 主要角色分析

• Robinson Crusoe• Friday• Xury• The Portuguese

Captain

• Robinson, the chief actor of Defoe's novel, is a headstrong 固执 young man. In 1652, against the will of his parents, Robinson begins a life of sea-faring adventure. his resourcefulness 足智多谋 in building a home, dairy, grape arbor 凉亭 , country house, and goat stable from practically nothing is clearly remarkable.

• admirable qualities ：resourceful ， capable ， independent ， creative

鲁滨孙是一个充满劳动热情的人，伟大的人，坚毅的人。面对人生困境，鲁滨孙的所作所为，显示了一个硬汉子的坚毅性格与英雄本色，体现了资产阶级上升时期的创造精神和开拓精神，他敢于同恶劣的环境作斗争。

• Though he is generous toward people, as when he gives gifts to his sisters and the captain, Crusoe reveals very little tender or sincere affection in his dealings with them. When Crusoe tells us that he has gotten married and that his wife has died all within the same sentence, his indifference to her seems almost cruel. Crusoe is very interested in possessions, power, and prestige 威望 .

• 鲁滨孙又是个资产者和殖民者，因此具有剥削掠夺的本性。

• Probably the first nonwhite character to be given a realistic, individualized, and humane portrayal in the English novel, Friday has a huge literary and cultural importance. At the moment when Crusoe teaches Friday to call him “Master” ,Friday becomes an enduring political symbol of racial injustice in a modern world critical of imperialist expansion.

• He is honest, informing Crusoe of the money he has borrowed against Crusoe’s investments, and repaying a part of it immediately even though it is financially difficult for him to do so. He is loyal, honoring his duties toward Crusoe even after twenty-eight years. Finally, he is extremely generous, paying Crusoe more than market value for the animal skins and slave boy after picking Crusoe up at sea, and giving Crusoe handsome gifts when leaving Brazil.

Six Aspects of Robinson Crusoe

• Colonial

• Religious

• Moral

• Economic

• Legacy

• Interpretation

Colonial

• Novelist James Joyce noted that the true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist. … The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."

In a sense Crusoe attempts to replicate his own society on the island. This is achieved through the application of European technology, agriculture, and even a rudimentary political hierarchy. Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the 'king' of the island, whilst the captain describes him as the 'governor' to the mutineers. At the very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a 'colony.'

The idealized master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the 'enlightened' European whilst Friday is the 'savage' who can only be redeemed from his supposedly barbarous way of life through assimilation into Crusoe's culture. Nevertheless, within the novel Defoe also takes the opportunity to criticize the historic Spanish conquest of South America.

Religious

• According to J.P. Hunter, Robinson is not a hero, but an everyman. He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understand, and ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land. The book tells the story of how Robinson becomes closer to God, not through listening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst nature with only a Bible to read.

•

• Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects. Defoe was himself a Puritan moralist, and normally worked in the guide tradition, writing books on how to be a good Puritan Christian, such as The New Family Instructor (1728) and Religious Courtship (1732). While Robinson Crusoe is far more than a guide, it shares many of the same themes and theological and moral points of view.

• A central concern of Defoe's in the novel is the Christian notion of Providence. Crusoe often feels himself guided by a divinely ordained fate, thus explaining his robust optimism in the face of apparent hopelessness. His various fortunate intuitions are taken as evidence of a benign spirit world. Defoe also foregrounds this theme by arranging highly significant events in the novel to occur on Crusoe's birthday.

Moral

• When confronted with the cannibals, Crusoe wrestles with the problem of cultural relativism. Despite his disgust, he feels unjustified in holding the natives morally responsible for a practice so deeply ingrained in their culture. Nevertheless he retains his belief in an absolute standard of morality; he regards cannibalism as a 'national crime' and forbids Friday from practising it. Modern readers may also note that despite Crusoe's apparently superior morality, in common with the culture of his day, he uncritically accepts the institution of slavery.

Economic• In classical and neoclassical economics,

Crusoe is regularly used to illustrate the theory of production and choice in the absence of trade, money and prices.Crusoe must allocate effort between production and leisure, and must choose between alternative production possibilities to meet his needs. The arrival of Friday is then used to illustrate the possibility of, and gains from, trade.

• The classical treatment of the Crusoe economy has been discussed and criticised from a variety of perspectives. Karl Marx made an analysis of Crusoe, while also mocking the heavy use in classical economics of the fictional story, in his classic work Capital. In Marxist terms, Crusoe's experiences on the island represents the inherent economic value of labour over capital. Crusoe frequently observes that the money he salvaged from the ship is worthless on the island, especially when compared to his tools.

• For the literary critic Angus Ross, Defoe's point is that money has no intrinsic value and is only valuable insofar as it can be used in trade. There is also a notable correlation between Crusoe's spiritual and financial development as the novel progres ses, possibly signifying Defoe's belief in the Protestant work ethic.

• The Crusoe model has also been assessed from the perspectives of feminism and Austrian economics.

Legacy• Literature :The success of the book

spawned many imitators, and castaway novels became quite popular in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of these have fallen into obscurity, but some became established in their own right, including The Swiss Family Robinson.

• Stage and film : Jacques Offenbach wrote an opéra comique called Robinson Crusoé which was first performed at the Opéra-Comique ,Salle Favart on 23 November 1867. This was based on the British pantomime version rather than the novel itself. The libretto was by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux. The opera includes a duet by Robinson Crusoe and Friday.

Dances With Wolves

• Despite its complicated narrative style and the absence of the supposedly indispensable love motive, it was received well in the literary world. The book is considered one of the most widely published books in history (behind some of the sacred texts).It has been a hit since the day it was published, and continues to be highly regarded to this day.

Interpretation

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