Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe | J. Paul Hunter (essay date 1966)
J. Paul Hunter (essay date 1966)
SOURCE: "The 'Occasion' of Robinson Crusoe" in The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe's Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in "Robinson Crusoe," The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966, pp. 1–22.
[Below, Hunter discredits certain assumptions about what inspired Robinson Crusoe as well as the notion that the book falls into the tradition of travel literature; he asserts that Crusoe is a Christian work in which geographical facts are introduced primarily for their narrative function.]
Interpretive problems in eighteenth-century fiction result not so much from a lack of historical interest and knowledge as from a disguised antihistoricism in applying known facts, for it is often tempting to use history rather than surrender to it. Defoe study has, I think, more often settled for the illusion of history than for a full, rigorous, and sensitive examination of the assumed contexts of a particular work. Old...
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