DanielDoefoe笛福.pptVIP

Prepared by Tony Sun Daniel Defoe Four facts to remember about Defoe Defoe’s literary creation Robinson Crusoe: The story of the novel The image of Robinson Crusoe Four facts to remember 1. Defoe was a jack-of-all-trades, as well as a writer; he seemed to have had some continued purpose of educating and uplifting the common people; 2. He was a radical nonconformist in religion. The puritan zeal for reform possessed him and this zeal marked all his numerous works, and accounts for the moralizing to be found everywhere. Four facts to remember 3. Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer, with a reporter’s eye for the picturesque and a newspaper man’s instinct for making a “good story”. Four facts to remember 4. Defoe knew prison life. In 1702 Defoe published a pamphlet called The Short Way with the Dissenters in which Defoe advocated hanging all dissenting ministers, and sending all member of the free churches into exile. Both dissenters and Tories took the author literally. Defoe was tried, found guilty of seditious libel, and sentenced to be fined, to stand three days in the pillory and to be imprisoned. Hardly had the sentence been pronounced when Defoe wrote his Hymn to the Pillory which Defoe scattered all over London. Four facts to remember 4. Crowds flocked to cheer him in the pillory and Defoe was making popularity out of persecution. His enemies bundled him off to Newgate prison. He turned this experience also to account by publishing a popular newspaper, and by getting acquainted with rogues, pirates, smugglers, and miscellaneous outcasts, each one with a “good story” to be used later. His prison life and the further knowledge of criminals gained in over twenty years as a spy account for his numerous stories of thieves and pirates. His social outlook As a member of the middle class, Defoe spoke for and to the members of his class and his novels enjoyed great popularity among the less cultivated readers. In most of his works, he gave his praise to the hard-worki