Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Robinson Crusoe and its sequel.

The immediate and permanent popularity of Robinson Crusoe is a commonplace of literary history. Defoe, who had a keen eye for his market, produced, in about four months, The Farther Adventures of his hero, which had some, though less, vogue, and, a year later, Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a volume of essays which had no vogue at all. The original part, The Strange and Surprizing Adventures, at once stirred up acrimonious critics, but, also, attracted many imitators and, in the course of years, became the occasion of legends and fantastic theories. All these—for example, the story that Harley was the real author of the book— may be dismissed without hesitation. Almost equally without foundation, despite his own statements, is the notion that Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of Defoe's life. It may even be doubted whether he ever hawked his manuscript about in order to secure a publisher. Some things, however, may be considered certain with regard to this classic. Defoe wrote it primarily for the edification, rather than for the delectation, of his readers, although he did not evade giving them pleasure and although, assuredly, he took pleasure himself in his own creation. It is equally clear that, in many of its pages, Defoe the writer of pious manuals is to be discovered; in others, Defoe the student of geography and of volumes of voyages; in others, Defoe the minute observer and reporter. The book is a product that might have been expected from the journalist we know, save only for the central portion of the story, the part that makes it a world classic, the account of Crusoe alone on his island. Here, to use a phrase applied by Brunetiere to Balzac, Defoe displays a power of which he had given but few indications, the power to make alive. This power to make alive is not to be explained by emphasis upon Defoe's command of convincing details or by any other stock phrase of criticism. It is a gift of genius denied to preceding English writers of prose fiction displayed by Defoe himself for a few years in a small number of books, and rarely equalled since, although after him the secret of writing an interesting and well-constructed tale of adventure was more or less an open one. The form of his story could be imitated, but not its soul. The universal appeal implied in the realistic account of the successful struggle of one man against the pitiless forces of nature was something no one else could impart to a book of adventure, something Defoe himself never caught again. It is this that links Robinson Crusoe with the great poems of the world and makes it perhaps the most indisputable English classic of modern times, however little of a poet, in a true sense, its author may have been.

Defoe's last years.

But, apparently, there was no limit, save death, to Defoe's productiveness. Accordingly, we must pass over, with scarcely a word, the numerous pamphlets and volumes of the years 1725-31. The most important of the tracts are those of a sociological character, for example, the astonishingly suggestive Augusta Triumphans: or the Way to make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe. The most interesting and important of the books is, most surely, The Complete English Tradesman, which, for variety of information, shrewd practical wisdom, engaging garrulousness and sheer carrying power of easy vernacular style, is nothing short of a masterpiece. Charles Lamb seems to have been rather fantastic in discovering in it a source of corruption for its author's countrymen. The book has probably corrupted just as many promising young men as Roxana—see the exemplary pages of Lee's biography of Defoe—has reclaimed wayward young women. Next to The Tradesman in interest, some would place the curious group of books dealing in a half sceptical, half credulous and altogether gossiping, fashion with occult subjects—The Political History of the Devil, A System of Magic and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, Others, with quite as much reason, will prefer A Plan of the English Commerce, or that sound and well written treatise The Complete English Gentleman, which, ironically enough, was left incomplete and was not published until about twenty years ago. The wiser lover of quaint and homely books will read, or, at least, glance over, all the productions of Defoe's last years on which he can lay his hands, will wish that the world might see a collected edition of them and will not allow the biographers to persuade him that there was any marked falling off in the old man's productivity, save for a mysterious period which stretched from the autumn of 1729 to the midsummer of 1730.



What happened to Defoe during these months we do not know and probably shall not know unless new documents unexpectedly come to light. In the spring of 1729, he had married his favourite daughter Sophia to the naturalist Henry Baker; in the autumn, he had been taken ill, just as the opening pages of The Complete English Gentleman were going through the press. In August, 1730, he was writing from Kent to his son-in-law Baker a letter full of complaints about his own bad health, his sufferings at the hands of a wicked enemy and his betrayal by one of his sons. It seems likely that he had transferred some property to his eldest son, Daniel, on condition that the latter would provide for his mother and her unmarried daughters, but that the shifty son of a shifty father had not lived up to his obligations. It is certain that, for some reason or other, the home at Newington, a pleasant one according to Baker's description, had been broken up after Defoe's recovery from his illness in the autumn of 1729. It seems probable that he believed it necessary to separate from his family and to take refuge in London and, later, in Kent. Was he the victim of hallucinations—had he any real enemy whose malice he must avoid—was he trying, as he had tried before the marriage, to elude certain financial demands made by the canny Baker—had he reverted to the practices of his early manhood and engaged in hazardous speculations? Who can tell? All that we now seem to know definitely is that, during the autumn of 1730 and the early winter of 1731, he was writing pamphlets and revising books in a way that indicates little falling off of energy and absolutely no decay of mental powers, and that, on 26 April, 1731, he died of a lethargy at his lodgings in Ropemaker's alley, Moorfields, not far from where he was born.

 

Johnathan Swift


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 700


<== previous page | next page ==>
DEBATE TOPICS FOR SOC 2010 SOCIAL PROBLEMS | Swift's chief Satires: A Tale of a Tub; The Battle of the Books, Gulliver's Travels.
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.007 sec.)