Monday 17 October 2011

C1 Literary Mayhem no.3 - The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un‐inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque;.

Fellow literary friends, 
Welcome to a deserted island edition of our weekly book sessions:


or otherwise known as Robinson Crusoe.

You are going to read:



We are also going to discuss:


Colonial


Crusoe standing over Friday after he frees him from the cannibals.
Novelist James Joyce noted that the true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist. … The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."[10]
In a sense Crusoe attempts to replicate his society on the island. This is achieved through the use of European technology, agriculture and even a rudimentary political hierarchy. Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the 'king' of the island, whilst the captain describes him as the 'governor' to the mutineers. At the very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a 'colony'. The idealised master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the 'enlightened' European whilst Friday is the 'savage' who can only be redeemed from his barbarous way of life through assimilation into Crusoe's culture. Nonetheless Defoe also takes the opportunity to criticise the historic Spanish conquest of South America.

Religious

According to J.P. Hunter, Robinson is not a hero but an everyman. He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understand and ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land. The book tells the story of how Robinson becomes closer to God, not through listening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst nature with only a Bible to read.
Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects. Defoe was a Puritan moralist and normally worked in the guide tradition, writing books on how to be a good Puritan Christian. Cruso would have been remembered by contemporaries and the association with guide books is clear. It has even been speculated that God the Guide of Youth inspired Robinson Crusoe because of a number of passages in that work that are closely tied to the novel.[11]
The Biblical story of Jonah is alluded to in the first part of the novel. Like Jonah, Crusoe neglects his 'duty' and is punished at sea.
A leitmotif of the novel is the Christian notion of Providence. Crusoe often feels guided by a divinely ordained fate, thus explaining his robust optimism in the face of apparent hopelessness. His various fortunate intuitions are taken as evidence of a benign spirit world. Defoe also foregrounds this theme by arranging highly significant events in the novel to occur on Crusoe's birthday.

Moral

When confronted with the cannibals, Crusoe wrestles with the problem of cultural relativism. Despite his disgust, he feels unjustified in holding the natives morally responsible for a practice so deeply ingrained in their culture. Nevertheless he retains his belief in an absolute standard of morality; he regards cannibalism as a 'national crime' and forbids Friday from practising it. Modern readers may also note that despite Crusoe's self-proclaimed superior morality, he uncritically accepts the institution of slavery.

Resources
Movies

Robinson Crusoe -- Luis Buñuel (1954)

1964 Television series

!PLEASE WATCH! 1997 Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNrwE6aSNk WITH SUBTITLES - MORE ABOUT DANIEL DEFOE

2008 "Crusoe" TV Series

A Game

In this game you will need your dictionary skills to help Robinson

A Free AudioBook

Chapter 5 – Builds a House – The Journal – 00:38:15 

Classic Literature VideoBook with synchronized text, interactive transcript, and closed captions in multiple languages. Audio courtesy of Librivox. Read by Mark F. Smith. WITH CZECH SUBTITLES, RECOMMENDED!



And that's all, folks.

Posted by at 16:33

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