Robinson Crusoe vs Pride and Prejudice
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the most important novels of the eighteenth century, and of the English literature.
It is certainly the first novel in the sense that it is the first fictional narrative in which the ordinary person’s activities are the centre of continuous literary attention. Before that, in the early eighteenth century, authors like Pope, Swift, Addison and Steele looked back to the Rome of Caesar Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD) as a golden age. That period is called the Augustan age. Literature was very different since it focused on mythology and epic heroes. However, to what extent can Robinson Crusoe be called the “first novel” and how is it different from all that have been done so far? Besides, what are the evolutions in the novel genre leading to Victorian novels, like Pride and Prejudice published almost one hundred years later (1813) in terms of style, themes and concerns?
Augustan writers, before Daniel Defoe, were very protective of the status quo and their novels were philosophical and religious, based on a myth of the eternal fitness of things. By contrast, Defoe stood for revolutionary change, economic individualism, social mobility, trade, and freedom of consciousness. For Swift, Defoe was “the fellow that was pilloried, I have forgotten his name.” He represented at once a social literary and intellectual challenge to the Augustan world, and the Augustans reacted to him accordingly.
In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe deals with major points of Western civilisation like trade, mercantile capitalism since at that time, a great attempt was made to dominate other continents, spread culture, beliefs, like for example, when Robinson tries to convert Friday into Christianity, as he considers him a savage. In the eighteenth century, British economically depended on slave trade, which was abolished on the early 1800s. Therefore, Daniel Defoe was familiar with this practise, even though he did not actively criticise it. There
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the most important novels of the eighteenth century, and of the English literature.
It is certainly the first novel in the sense that it is the first fictional narrative in which the ordinary person’s activities are the centre of continuous literary attention. Before that, in the early eighteenth century, authors like Pope, Swift, Addison and Steele looked back to the Rome of Caesar Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD) as a golden age. That period is called the Augustan age. Literature was very different since it focused on mythology and epic heroes. However, to what extent can Robinson Crusoe be called the “first novel” and how is it different from all that have been done so far? Besides, what are the evolutions in the novel genre leading to Victorian novels, like Pride and Prejudice published almost one hundred years later (1813) in terms of style, themes and concerns?
Augustan writers, before Daniel Defoe, were very protective of the status quo and their novels were philosophical and religious, based on a myth of the eternal fitness of things. By contrast, Defoe stood for revolutionary change, economic individualism, social mobility, trade, and freedom of consciousness. For Swift, Defoe was “the fellow that was pilloried, I have forgotten his name.” He represented at once a social literary and intellectual challenge to the Augustan world, and the Augustans reacted to him accordingly.
In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe deals with major points of Western civilisation like trade, mercantile capitalism since at that time, a great attempt was made to dominate other continents, spread culture, beliefs, like for example, when Robinson tries to convert Friday into Christianity, as he considers him a savage. In the eighteenth century, British economically depended on slave trade, which was abolished on the early 1800s. Therefore, Daniel Defoe was familiar with this practise, even though he did not actively criticise it. There
Bibliography: Defoe, D. Robinson Crusoe. 1719. London: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994. Skilton, D. The English novel: Defoe to the Victorians. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1977. Loveridge, M. A history of Augustan fable. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Secord, A.W. Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963: 9-108. Sherbo, A. Studies in the Eighteenth Century English Novel. Michigan: Michigan State UP, 1969: ch.10. Skinner, J. An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Spaas, L. Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphoses. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.