英美文学：部分作家的介绍和评论—Daniel Defoe

　　Daniel Defoe(1660-1731)

　　Life: full of surprising adventures; experienced both poverty and prosperity, persecution ( stands for three days in the pillory) and popularity; a merchant, a spy, a journalist, a pamphleteer, a poet and a novelist. In religion, a radical non-conformist, a puritan. Considered an enlightener, writing to educate and uplift the common people.

　　Characteristics of his novels:

　　The central characters in his novels are usually lower-lass people, the down-trodden, the unfortunate and the criminals, like whore, pirate, pickpocket, rogue. Known as Picaresque novel. The central idea of his novels is man is good and noble by nature, but may be corrupted by an evil social environment. His novels are the first literary works devoted to the study of the problems of the lower class people. The details of his novels are usually organized in a vivid way and his stories are both credible and fascinating. He wanted his readers to regard his novels as true stories and so he deliberately avoids all art in writing.

　　His language is smooth, easy, colloquial and mostly vernacular.

　　The literary significance of Robinson Crusoe:

　　Based on the experience of a Scottish sailor A. Selkirk;

　　The growth of Robinson from a naïve and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life. A real hero, a typical 18th c English middle class man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against hostile natural environment and also against human fate. In describing R’s life on the island, he glorified human labor and the puritan fortitude. From an individual laborer to a master and colonizer, Crusoe seems to have gone through several stages of human civilization.

　　Theme: man can improve his condition through labor and struggling with nature.

　　Questions:

　　1. the characteristics of Defoe’s novels.

　　the literary significance of Robinson Crusoe.

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