Soomin Olivia Noh
David Clark
British Literature 12B
9 May 2016
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe
In the 18th century England, anybody talked about novel. No one in anybody disagreed that Robinson Crusoe, the art of Daniel Defoe, made the trend of having anybody be interested in the novel. From this point, books were not the exclusive property of the privileged class, but what many citizens enjoyed in their daily lives. The lifetime of Daniel Defoe was not only shared as the popular English writer but also a journalist, even more, a merchant, and a spy, which made his life so dynamic. Daniel Defoe’s novels, especially Robinson Crusoe, greatly reflect Defoe’s moral beliefs, personal experiences, and political battles …show more content…
In very simple terms, he was at the same time very worldly and very religious and was not really prepared to compromise between these two extremes. Such an attitude was bound to lead to many problems, particularly on the many occasions when Defoe sets himself up as a moralist, a favorite role in which he sustained throughout his writing career. It also leads Defoe to write several full-length books of pious moral instruction, as well as ostensibly providing the motivation of much of his journalism and his novels. Robinson Crusoe obviously cares about moral questions and treats experience as an interaction of motive and circumstances. But Crusoe’s ultimate concerns may be properly described as existential rather than moralistic, and underneath its diversity and moral ambiguity it is most about self-assertion and the accommodation of nature to man and of social ideology to personal reality. Defoe uses the island as a setting to isolate and resolve conflicts within Crusoe’s conflicts that he shares with men in all places and all …show more content…
During his lifetime, Defoe was not highly regarded by his literary contemporaries. But by the mid-19th century, critics come to appreciate Defoe’s ability to plumb the depth of human emotion and to re-create in his fiction all the rich detail of real life.
It is told that Daniel Defoe used 200 pen names during his lifetime. He wrote non-fiction books on such diverse subjects as British travel, Highwaymen, pirates, and the Scottish church. He was indeed a talented man with diverse abilities. However for most of his life, Daniel Defoe was in a miserable situation of being chased by creditors or moneylenders. Luckily for him, at that time, the British law did not allow debt collection or any kind of arrests on Sundays, so on the Lord’s day, he strutted around which made him a nickname, ‘Sunday gentleman’ because he was seen only on
David Clark
British Literature 12B
9 May 2016
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe
In the 18th century England, anybody talked about novel. No one in anybody disagreed that Robinson Crusoe, the art of Daniel Defoe, made the trend of having anybody be interested in the novel. From this point, books were not the exclusive property of the privileged class, but what many citizens enjoyed in their daily lives. The lifetime of Daniel Defoe was not only shared as the popular English writer but also a journalist, even more, a merchant, and a spy, which made his life so dynamic. Daniel Defoe’s novels, especially Robinson Crusoe, greatly reflect Defoe’s moral beliefs, personal experiences, and political battles …show more content…
In very simple terms, he was at the same time very worldly and very religious and was not really prepared to compromise between these two extremes. Such an attitude was bound to lead to many problems, particularly on the many occasions when Defoe sets himself up as a moralist, a favorite role in which he sustained throughout his writing career. It also leads Defoe to write several full-length books of pious moral instruction, as well as ostensibly providing the motivation of much of his journalism and his novels. Robinson Crusoe obviously cares about moral questions and treats experience as an interaction of motive and circumstances. But Crusoe’s ultimate concerns may be properly described as existential rather than moralistic, and underneath its diversity and moral ambiguity it is most about self-assertion and the accommodation of nature to man and of social ideology to personal reality. Defoe uses the island as a setting to isolate and resolve conflicts within Crusoe’s conflicts that he shares with men in all places and all …show more content…
During his lifetime, Defoe was not highly regarded by his literary contemporaries. But by the mid-19th century, critics come to appreciate Defoe’s ability to plumb the depth of human emotion and to re-create in his fiction all the rich detail of real life.
It is told that Daniel Defoe used 200 pen names during his lifetime. He wrote non-fiction books on such diverse subjects as British travel, Highwaymen, pirates, and the Scottish church. He was indeed a talented man with diverse abilities. However for most of his life, Daniel Defoe was in a miserable situation of being chased by creditors or moneylenders. Luckily for him, at that time, the British law did not allow debt collection or any kind of arrests on Sundays, so on the Lord’s day, he strutted around which made him a nickname, ‘Sunday gentleman’ because he was seen only on