Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe - Everett Zimmerman (essay date 1975)
Everett Zimmerman (essay date 1975)
SOURCE: "Robinson Crusoe: Author and Narrator," in Defoe and the Novel, University of California Press, 1975, pp. 20–47.
[In the following excerpt, Zimmerman explores problems in narrative consistency in Robinson Crusoe and contends that The Farther Adventures adds psychological aspects to the theological ideas found in the first novel.]
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719. According to the title page, it was "written by Himself"; the "preface" mentions, in addition, an editor. The work purports to be autobiography, and was lent at least a limited plausibility by the contemporary interest in Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who spent five years alone on an uninhabited island. Defoe's relationship to his book is difficult to define because of his narrative method: he tries to authenticate the account as being entirely Crusoe's....
[The entire page is 7847 words long]
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