scholarly journals Robinson Crusoe, Friday, and the Noble Savage: The Illustration of the Rescue of Friday Scene in the Eighteenth Century

1986 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
David Blewett
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Noble Savage

The Soul's Imaginings: Daniel Defoe, William Cowper

PMLA ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Meyer Spacks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
William Cowper ◽  
Complex Functions ◽  
Spiritual Autobiographies ◽  
Christian Fellowship

The authors of eighteenth-century spiritual autobiographies and of their fictional imitations demonstrate the complex functions of imagination as a component of the spiritual life and of its records. Robinson Crusoe and William Cowper’s Memoir (1816) both delineate detailed sequences of emotional and imaginative development as the foundation of religious experience. Crusoe progresses to self-understanding by recognizing and mastering his own fear and anger and developing his capacity for love and by enlarging the resources of his imagination. Cowper asserts that his conversion and the Christian fellowship that followed it dominate his experience, but his account, with dark imagistic undertones, may also be read as revealing the persistence of despair. The unconscious shaping which produces this counter-pattern enriches the memoir’s implication. In novel and autobiography alike, the divergence between what the author asserts and what he suggests, reflecting varying possibilities of the imagination, can generate fruitful literary effects.

on The Invention of Hunter-Gatherers in Seventeenth Century Europe

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-130
Author(s):  
Pieter Van de Velde
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Great Time ◽  
Primitive Society ◽  
Noble Savage

Although the title of Pluciennik's essay refers to hunter-gatherers, his description of thegenealogyof that concept hardly mentions them in these terms; rather, seventeenth and eighteenth century European perceptions of non-peasant pursuits and primitive societies are discussed. Certainly, the labels themselves are unimportant, it is their meaning that matters, in this case the Image of the Other. Pluciennik avoids the noble savage strand of European thinking, and instead emphasises the primitive, un-civilized counterstrand. He must have had a great time in the amassing of seventeenth century quotes on the forests and wildernesses and their most profitable use in the eyes of European merchants and their grooms. Yet most of this ground has been covered previously with a balanced account of especially thenobleand theprimitiveaspects in Adam Kuper's 1988 essay subtitledThe transformation of an illusionwith a title almost identical to that of the present paper:The invention of primitive society.

scholarly journals A Post-Colonial Re-Reading of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Hazmah Ali AI-Harshan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
The Road ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
English National Identity ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Set Up ◽  
English Subject

The imperial project started to influence English national identity as early as the mid-seventeenth century, and the English began to relate their national prominence to their colonial activities, whether in trade or in the acquisition of foreign territories, throughout the eighteenth century. However, England experienced its share of anxieties on the road to imperial "greatness" in its dealings with both other European powers and its native subjects. The British people's tendency to examine themselves and their international achievements with intense pride helped to neutralize those anxieties, much like Crusoe's imagined responses to possible dangers alleviate his fictional forebodings. The English ameliorated their concerns about their international position by becoming an ever more self-referential society, thinking more highly of themselves on account of their contact with colonized peoples, as is epitomized in the personality of Crusoe. To the fictional Crusoe, the experience of his relationship with Friday validates his self-worth and his native culture more than anything else. Robinson Crusoe's affirmation of colonial power through the assertion of his authority over a particular (othered) individual corresponds with, and epitomizes, England's trading and territorial empire during the eighteenth century and the consequent effects on British subjectivity, at a time when the British were struggling to set up a trading empire and challenging other European powers for territory and markets abroad. Robinson Crusoe successfully resolves the insecurities relating to Britain's colonial activities by asserting, through Crusoe's character, the superior nature of the English subject.

Being Human in the Wor(l)d: Chinese Men and Maxine Hong Kingston's Reworking of Robinson Crusoe

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
MONICA CHIU
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Chinese Men ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe is nothing less than a nationalist narrative that extols the burgeoning capitalism of eighteenth-century England. In this moving tale, a ship-wrecked slave trader, stranded on an island for twenty-four-years, single-handedly consolidates the arduous and multi-tasked feat of making bread – from planting the wheat to producing the finished product – into a one-person job. On a smaller but no less devastating scale, he also succeeds in replicating the process of colonization through his master–slave relationship with Friday. The novel thus popularizes the notion of self-sufficiency through the mechanisms of capitalism, conquest, and the transmission of hegemony.

“Between Japan and California”: Imaginative Pacific Geography and East Asian Culture in Penelope Aubin’s The Noble Slaves

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-60
Author(s):  
Yoojung Choi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Far East ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
The North ◽  
East Asian Culture ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Imaginative Geography ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
The North Pacific

Penelope Aubin’s mixed-up representation of Japan and the Pacific in The Noble Slaves (1722) has long been considered as an indication of the author’s insufficient geographical knowledge. In this essay, I reassess the East Asian setting of The Noble Slaves in the context of eighteenth-century geographical discourses. By examining Herman Moll’s maps as possible source materials, I argue that Aubin’s imaginative geography reflects not her personal ignorance but the limitations and uncertainties of contemporary cartographical knowledge about the North Pacific. Aubin uses the speculative nature of early Enlightenment geographical discourses for a narrative experiment and reimagining of East Asia. Aubin’s unique representation of East Asian cultures, such as Japanese Christian “Indians” and the ancient pagan temple, hinges on the emotions of wonder and curiosity, which can be read as a criticism of Robinson Crusoe’s hostile attitude toward the Far East in Daniel Defoe’s The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). This essay ultimately situates Aubin as a significant participant in early eighteenth-century knowledge production about the world.

Reassessing ROBERT DRURY'S JOURNAL as A Historical Source for Southern Madagascar

1996 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 233-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Parker Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Coast ◽  
Local People ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Relation ◽  
Insight Into

In 1729 a book entitled Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal During Fifteen Years Captivity on that Island was published in London. It describes the shipwreck of an East Indiaman on the south coast of Madagascar, the enforced stay of the crew at the royal capital of the Antandroy people, the crew's escape and massacre, the survival of the midshipmen, including Drury, as royal slaves, and Drury's eventual escape to the English colony of St. Augustine. It purports to be his authentic account, digested into order by a transcriber or editor and published at the request of his friends. A certification of its authenticity is provided at the front of the first edition by Captain William Mackett, the ship's captain who brought Drury back to England, and the author states that if anyone doubts the veracity of his tale or wishes for a further account, he is “to be found every day at Old Tom's Coffee-house in Birchin Lane, London.”The tale bears many superficial resemblances to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Knox's An Historical Relation of Ceylon and the anonymous editor is at pains to state in the preface that the book was undoubtedly likely to be “…taken for such another romance as ‘Robinson Crusoe’…” whereas it was “…nothing else but a plain, honest narrative of matter of fact.” If this is the case, then Drury's account provides a fascinating insight into the world of an emergent Malagasy kingdom at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was a crucial moment in Madagascar's history, when the European world of long-distance trade, slaving, and piracy was exerting a strong impact on the local people, culminating in colonization by France two centuries later.

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