Daniel Defoe
(1660-1731)
LIM Lesson
Daniel Defoe
Early Life and Education
• He was born in London in a Puritan
family.
• He was educated at one of the best
Dissenting Academies
• He changed a lot of jobs.
• His political inclinations changed
according to hopes and achievements.
Daniel Defoe
The Novelist
• Robinson Crusoe, 1719.
• Moll Flanders, 1722.
• Captain Singleton, 1720.
• A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722.
• Memoirs of a Cavalier, 1724.
Daniel Defoe
The Father of Modern Journalism
• He wrote almost exclusively in prose.
• Essays, pamphlets and travel books.
• Articles for newspapers and magazines.
• 1704 → The Review.
Daniel Defoe
Songs and Sonnets (1633)
• It is a collection of love elegies and love songs.
• Donne’s love is physical as well as spiritual.
• The poem reflects a passionately tender attitude to love
and women.
• He believes that the union of the souls is stronger than
that of the bodies → lovers are compared to the
connected legs of a compass.
Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe
• It is the first English novel.
• It has a first-person narrator
→ fake autobiography.
• Places are described in detail.
• Time is accounted for in a
precise manner.
• Possible source → A Cruising Voyage Round the
World.
• Robinson is the celebration of the English mercantile
hero.
Daniel Defoe
Robinson & Friday
• He is the archetype of the
colonialist.
• Robinson and Friday → modern
colonialism:
a. Name giving.
b. European clothes.
c. European language.
d. New religion.
e. Technical superiority.
Daniel Defoe
The Story
• Robinson goes to sea despite his father’s advice.
• During one of his trips he is shipwrecked on a desert
island.
• Gradually he manages to live a comfortable life.
• He rescues Friday, the prisoner of a group of Indians.
• The two live together on the island: Robinson is the
master, Friday is his servant.
• Robison is rescued by a ship and sails back to England.
Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders
• A fictitious autobiography.
• She is the personification of the modern woman.
• The happy ending shows Defoe’s didactic and moral
concern.
Daniel Defoe
The Story
• An abandoned child, born in Newgate prison
• She realizes that to exploit her beauty and intelligence is
the chance to make her way in the world
• She marries several times
• She goes to jail and is sentenced to the penal colony of
Virginia
• She becomes a rich and respectable woman
Daniel Defoe
