We Must Keep Daniel Defoe in the Literary Cannon

Interesting that he arranged and organized his prominent records of his notes on debates of 1780. Also, several letters relating to

His main purpose for writing was to remind the community that New England was first a plantation of religion. The community slowly became profit driven and glued their focus to trade. He did not want the original purpose to be buried underneath dollar signs.

In Bradford’s factual piece of literature, “The Pilgrims Arrive in Plymouth”, he gives insight to the Puritan’s reasoning for coming to America. He describes the immense growth of the Puritan religion throughout his writings and shows how Puritanism could affect the early American literature as it did. Hawthorne describes a religious moral, by using Parson Hooper as a profound example of the weight that sin held in the colonial time period and how fearful the colonists were of sin in his short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Washington Irving’s short story, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, shows the Puritans deep religious beliefs and their belief in God’s arch enemy, the devil, as he shows the effects of a deal with Lucifer, and how to the Puritan’s, it was a believable occurrence. Puritanism was a major influence on early American literature and their belief system greatly influenced the style of writing in the time

Daniel Defoe wrote ‘A journal of plague year’ which is a historical fiction novel that

This is an extremely important piece of the story in developing the theme of the story that he is going through a religious transformation. All of the diction syntax and figurative language is geared toward making this earthquake seem as bad as Defoe can make it sound. It has all of that build up and then at the end he states that he never had one serious thought of religion. It shows that he is still on the island and still learning from his previous sins, still in metamorphosis. For example, he uses the word overthrown instead of something like undone or destroyed, it has a more negative connotation.

Many people believe Defoe’s 1722 writing “A Journal of the Plague Year” is real based on the first person narrative, even though it’s a fictional retelling of the events. In his story, the narrator is faced with a difficult decision: to stay in London or flee from the plague. In the end, he decides to stay because of God’s

In The Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, the effects of the plague on humanity show the delicacy of life and the overall effect of death upon the living. For example, when Defoe describes the enormous amount of people who were affected by the plague he says “sorrow and sadness sat upon every face” and that “all looked deeply concerned” and “looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger” (Defoe 4-8). Essentially, while the plague had a direct effect on the lives it took, it also had a substantial effect on the lives around those that were taken. The utter despair that one feels upon the loss of a loved one had such an impact on the people in the story that the city itself seemed to be in a perpetual state of despondency.

The first reason that Robinson Crusoe is an admirable character is because he devotes himself to growing his spiritual life. First, he asserts, “My duty to God, and the reading scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time from thrice every day.” (Defoe

It has been observed that when placed in harsh or unusual conditions, people tend to look to spiritual support to help them overcome adversity. In Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe not only depicts the struggle of a man abandoned on a deserted island, but also depicts Crusoe's repentance for past disobedience against his father and humanity as well as his acceptance of religion into his life. Crusoe's religious beliefs, however, do not remain consistent; in fact, he later uses religion as a justification for murder and other immoral acts. Crusoe accepts religion into his life, repenting for his sins throughout the novel, however his faith is not genuine, only becoming strong when he experiences misfortunes.

This paper is an attempt to examine the seeming opposition of religion vs. self-interest with respect to the character of Robinson Crusoe. I will venture to demonstrate that in the novel, Defoe illustrates the contradictions with which Crusoe must contend as he strives to please God while ensuring his own survival in the world. In part, I will endeavor to show that a distorted sense of Puritanism as well as the existing colonial mindset exacerbated this opposition, and resulted in what I propose to be Defoe's (possibly retroactive) imposition of a religious justification for Crusoe's actions.

Voltaire was a rebellious and radical thinker, whose sharp wit and pointed satire drew the ire of critics who say he disrespected the orthodoxy of church and state, and won the respect of a growing rationalist movement that had emerged out of the public sphere in Europe between the 17th and 18th centuries. Although Voltaire is known today for being a philosophical powerhouse, whose writing is the stuff of legend, for most of his life he only wrote plays, poems, and novels. It wasn’t until he was almost forty in 1733 that he published his first major philosophical work, “Letters Concerning the English Nation.” This was a series of letters that describe the customs, cultures and great men of England, and even though his praise for England, a country “where all the arts are honored and rewarded,” and where one could think “free and nobly without being held back by any servile fear,” may be overblown, they are important nonetheless, because it highlights the virtues that an Enlightened society should strive for. (114) In many ways these were not so much love letters to England, as much as they were a call for the rest of Europe to progress in the rationalist movement that England had set the tone for.

Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as a restless and generally unhappy character in the beginning of the novel. Like a lot of people in society, Crusoe was never truly satisfied with the “middle state” even though his father claimed it to be “the best state in the world” (Crusoe 44). In the beginning of the novel, Crusoe was also never truly satisfied when it came to his religious life and, like many people, made empty promises he could not keep due to his inherent desire to escape the restrictions of his social class; from the very beginning, this novel implies that human nature is inherently

Daniel Defoe’s picaresque novel Moll Flanders saw the light of the day in 1722. Of course, meticulously speaking, it cannot be called a novel in the strictest sense of the term. The credit of being the first 'proper' novel goes to Richardson's Pamela which was published a couple of decades later in 1740. Moll Flanders is somewhat deficient in psychological exploration and reads more like a narrative. Hence it would be better to call it a ‘rudimentary’ novel. However, the objective of this paper is not to debate or discuss the qualities of a novel found in Moll Flanders. The objective is to delineate how Defoe’s heroine Moll with her own effort trudges through thick and thin to make the most of a hopeless life. For all her shortcomings, she

The theme of "man’s relationship to God and the universe" presented in Epistle 1 of Alexander Pope’s "An Essay on Man" complements Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe is an inconsistent character who turns to God whenever he is in need, yet fails to maintain respect for nature and for his fellow man. In the first year of Robinson Crusoe’s solitary life on the island, he falls ill and has a terrifying dream that alters his awareness of his place in the universe and God’s control of it. This experience leads him to contemplate his past ingratitude and to embark on a life of piety, reading the Bible daily, though without a drastic or permanent change in his character.

As Defoe continues to write in a first-person narrative style, readers begin to see exactly how Crusoe thinks about and interprets the events that occur on the island. He has already established himself as the ruler of his kingdom on the island, however, he still expresses a longing for a companion since he has been alone on the island for years now. Whether this longing is due to a sincere loneliness or a desire for power over another individual is unclear until readers are introduced to Friday. Perhaps he longs for a friend, or perhaps he longs for a way to spread the ideals of his kingdom to other individuals. In