|
|
| & etc |
FEEDBACK
(C)1998-2012
All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated
13 January, 2012
|
|
|
|
Outlines of English and American Literature
Daniel Defoe
by Long, William J.
|
Among the forerunners of the modern novel is Daniel Foe,
author of Robinson Crusoe, who began to call himself "Defoe" after
he attained fame. He produced an amazing variety of wares: newspapers,
magazines, ghost stories, biographies, journals, memoirs, satires,
picaresque romances, essays on religion, reform, trade, projects,--in all
more than two hundred works. These were written in a picturesque style and
with such a wealth of detail that, though barefaced inventions for the most
part, they passed for veracious chronicles. One critic, thinking of the
vividly realistic Journal of the Plague Year and Memoirs of a
Cavalier, says that "Defoe wrote history, but invented the facts";
another declares that "the one little art of which Defoe was past master
was the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world as truth." The
long list of his works ends with a History of the Devil, in 1726.
Foe's career was an extraordinary one. By nature and training he
seems to have preferred devious ways to straight, and to have
concealed his chief motive whether he appeared as reformer or
politician, tradesman or writer, police-spy or friend of outcasts.
His education, which he picked up from men and circumstance, was
more varied than any university could have given him. Perhaps the
chief factor in this practical education was his ability to turn
every experience to profitable account. As a journalist he invented
the modern magazine (his Review appeared in 1704, five years
before Steele's Tatler); also he projected the interview,
the editorial, the "scoop," and other features which still figure
in our newspapers. As a hired pamphleteer, writing satires against
Whigs or Tories, he learned so many political secrets that when one
party fell he was the best possible man to be employed by the
other. While sitting in the stocks (in punishment for writing a
satirical pamphlet that set Tories and Churchmen by the ears) he
made such a hit with his doggerel verses against the authorities
that crowds came to the pillory to cheer him and to buy his poem.
While in durance vile, in the old Newgate Prison, he mingled freely
with all sorts of criminals (there were no separate cells in those
days), won their secrets, and used them to advantage in his
picaresque romances. He learned also so much of the shady side of
London life that no sooner was he released than he was employed as
a secret service agent, or spy, by the government which had jailed
him.
It is as difficult to find the real Foe amidst such devious trails
as to determine where a caribou is from the maze of footprints
which he leaves behind him. He seems to have been untiring in his
effort to secure better treatment of outcast folk, he speaks of
himself with apparent sincerity, as having received his message
from the Divine Spirit, but the impression which he made upon the
upper classes was reflected by Swift, who called him "a grave,
dogmatical rogue". For many years he was a popular hero, trusted
not only by the poor but by the criminal classes (ordinarily keen
judges of honesty in other men), until his secret connection with
the government became known. Then suspicion fell upon him, his
popularity was destroyed and he fled from London. The last few
years of his life were spent in hiding from real or imaginary
enemies.
Robinson Crusoe
Defoe was approaching his sixtieth year when he wrote Robinson
Crusoe (1719), a story which has been read through out the civilized
world, and which, after two centuries of life, is still young and vigorous.
The first charm of the book is in its moving adventures, which are
surprising enough to carry us through the moralizing passages. These also
have their value; for who ever read them without asking, What would I have
done or thought or felt under such circumstances? The work of society is
now so comfortably divided that one seldom dreams of being his own
mechanic, farmer, hunter, herdsman, cook and tailor, as Crusoe was.
Thinking of his experience we are brought face to face with our dependence
on others, with our debt to the countless, unnamed men whose labor made
civilization possible. We understand also the pioneers, who in the far,
lonely places of the earth have won a home and country from the wilderness.
When the adventures are duly appreciated we discover another charm of
Robinson Crusoe, namely, its intense reality. Defoe had that
experience of many projects, and that vivid imagination, which enabled him
to put himself in the place of his hero, [Footnote: The basis of
Robinson Crusoe was the experience of an English sailor, Alexander
Selkirk, or Selcraig, who was marooned on the lonely island of Juan
Fernandez, off the coast of Chile. There he lived in solitude for the space
of five years before he was rescued. When Selkirk returned to England
(1709) an account of his adventures appeared in the public press.] to
anticipate his needs, his feelings, his labors and triumph. That Crusoe was
heroic none will deny; yet his heroism was of a different kind from that
which we meet in the old romances. Here was no knight "without fear and
without reproach," but a plain man with his strength and weakness. He
despaired like other men; but instead of giving way to despair he drew up a
list of his blessings and afflictions, "like debtor and creditor," found a
reasonable balance in his favor, and straightway conquered himself,--which
is the first task of all real heroes. Again, he had horrible fears; he beat
his breast, cried out as one in mortal terror; then "I thought that would
do little good, so I began to make a raft." So he overcame his fears, as he
overcame the difficulties of the place, by setting himself to do alone what
a whole race of men had done before him. Robinson Crusoe is
therefore history as well as fiction; its subject is not Alexander Selkirk
but Homo Sapiens; its lesson is the everlasting triumph of will and work.
|
|
| |
