Exercises

1. Give a short account of the historical background of the age of the Enlightenment in England.

1) Why is the period called the "Enlightenment"?

2) What evils did the enlighteners want to do with?

3) In what way did they try to better the world?

4) Explain what you think is meant by the sentence: "The enlighteners wanted to bring 'light' to the people".

5) Compare the English period of the Enlightenment with the French one. Which of them was more progressive and why? Give your reason.

2. Name the most prominent French enlighteners.

3. What were the most characteristic features of the literature of the Enlightenment?

1) What new literary forms appeared?

2) Why do we say that the literature of the period was intended to be instructive?

3) Speak about the new type of hero.

4. Who was the greatest English classicist?

Daniel Defoe

(1661-1731)

His Life and Work

Daniel Defoe, the founder of the early bourgeois realistic novel, was first and foremost a journalist, and in many ways, the father of modern English periodicals. "The Review" which he founded in 1704 and conducted until 1713, is regarded as the first English newspaper. It paved the way for the magazines "The Tatler" and "The Spectator".

Daniel Defoe was born in London in a family of nonconformists (Dissenters).* His father, a butcher, was wealthy enough to give his son a good education.

______________

· Those who refuse to accept the doctrines of an established or national Church, especially those Protestants who dissent from the Church of England.

Daniel was to become a minister (a priest) in the Nonconformist Church, but when his training was completed, he decided to engage in business as a hosier. It was his cherished desire to become wealthy, but his wish was never fulfilled. Defoe went bankrupt several times. He was always deep in debt. "Thirty times I was rich and poor," he used to say. The only branch of business in which he proved successful was journalism and literature.

When Defoe was about twenty-three, he started writing pamphlets on questions of the hour.

When the Protestant king, William III, was placed on the throne (1689), Defoe started writing pamphlets praising his policy. This was the beginning of Defoe's literary career. In his "Essay on Projects" Defoe anticipated the greatest public improvements of modern times: higher education for women, the protection of seamen, the construction of highways, and the opening of savings-banks. He urged the establishment of a special academy to study literature and languages.

Owing to the fact that William III was supported by the Whig party, he was continually attacked by the Tories, who called him Dutch William. Some Tories attacked him in a satirical poem "The Foreigners", in which they declared that the English race should be kept pure. Contending against this idea, Defoe wrote a satire in verse, "The True-born Englishman"(1701), in which he proved that true-born Englishmen do not exist, since the English nation consists of Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, and others. He said: "A true-born Englishman is a contradiction in speech, an irony; in fact, a fiction." Defoe was thanked by the king for this pamphlet.

During the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714), persecution of the Dissenters began again, as in the reign of James II. Defoe wrote a pamphlet in defence of the Dissenters, entitled "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters" (1702), in which he attacked the Tories and the established Church. But the irony was so subtle that the enemy did not understand it at first: they believed Defoe when he said that the Dissenters should be "captured and tortured and burnt". They admired the pamphlet and considered it to be next best to the Bible. But as soon as they realized the real character of the pamphlet, Defoe was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, and, in order to disgrace him, the Tories subjected him to a cruel punishment: he had to stand in the pillory on a public square with his hands and head in stocks. Before this he had written his "Hymn to the Pillory", in which he criticized the law and demanded a fair trial. The Hymn was not published, but his friends made it popular, and it had tremendous success with the people. It was sung in the streets on the day Defoe was put in the pillory. People gathered round him and cheered him while he stood there, women threw flowers to him, and when the time came for him to be set free, people carried him from the square on their shoulders. This was the climax of his political career and the end of it.

Later, he became editor of a magazine which supported his former enemies, the Tories. Defoe, like many other journalists of the day, served the Tories as well as the Whigs. This should not be accepted as a change of principle: though party strife was very bitter, there were no serious contradictions between the two parties at that time. When the Whigs came to power after the death of Queen Anne, Defoe began to serve the Whigs again.

In 1719, he tried his hand at another kind of literature - fiction, and wrote the novel he is now best known by, "The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe". After the book was published, Defoe became famous and rich and was able to pay his creditors in full. Now he wrote for four public magazines and received a regular sum of money from the government.

Other novels which Defoe wrote were also very much talked about during his lifetime, but we do not here much about them now. Defoe published "The Life of Captain Singleton" in 1720, "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders" in 1721, "The History of Colonel Jack" in 1722, and "A History of the Lady Roxana in 1724.

In 1729, while at work on a book which was to be entitled "The Complete English Gentleman", Defoe fell ill and in two years' time he died.

"ROBINSON CRUSOE"

Books about voyages and new discoveries were exceedingly popular in the first quarter of the 18^th century. A true story that was described in one of Steele's magazines, "The Englishman", attracted Defoe's attention. It was about Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor, who had quarrelled with his captain and was put ashore on a desert island near South America where he lived quite alone for four years and four months. In 1709 he was picked up by a passing vessel. Selkirk's story interested Defoe so much that he decided to use it for a book. However, he made his hero, Robinson Crusoe, spend twenty-six years on a desert island.

At the beginning of the story the hero is an unexperienced youth, a rather light-minded boy, who develops into a strong-willed man, able to withstand all the calamities of his unusual destiny. Being cast ashore on a desert island after the shipwreck, alone and defenceless, Crusoe tried to be reasonable in order to master his despondency (loss of hope and courage). He knew that he must not give way to self-pity or fear, or to lose himself in mourning for his lost companions.

"[…] as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse, and I stated it very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comfort I enjoyed, against the miseries I suffered, thus: