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Robinson Crusoe: “Allusive Allegorick History”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In recent years much has been made of Robinson Crusoe as an epic of economic quest and conquest—one unfortunately impeded, however, by what James Sutherland calls “boggy stretches of moralizing.” Here I will suggest that some of the major tenets of the modified Calvinistic theology articulated in those moralizings are paralleled by a series or system of traditional Christian symbols which embody that doctrine, and so I propose a reading which takes the work to be precisely what Crusoe says it is—an “allusive allegorick History,” intended originally not only to delight but also to instruct. A complete study of this kind would draw its evidence not only from The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, but also from its continuation, The Farther Adventures, and their sequel, The Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With His Vision of the Angelick World—all three volumes “Written by Himself.” Furthermore, it would orient the symbolic elements of the work within the context of Defoe's other works and of traditional Bible exegesis particularly as it was expressed in the pietistic literature of the Puritans in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This exploratory study can treat only a selection of basic images and symbols, particularly from the narrative of the first two volumes of the work itself; for their context in exegesis—and aside from occasional illustrative materials— it must presume to some extent upon the reader's familiarity with some of the main traditions of Christian symbolism and the prevailing characteristics of the varied and extensive Puritan literature of piety.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967
Footnotes
*
A shorter version of this paper was read before English Section ii at the meeting of the Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, 28 December 1960.
References
Note 1 in page 399 See Maximillian E. Novak, “Robinson Crusoe's ‘Original Sin’,” SEL, i (1961), 19–29, and bibliography in his n. 1. Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London, 1946), p. 17, sees Crusoe as “the isolated economic man, pitting his lonely strength successfully against Nature … and carrying on a little missionary activity as a side-line.” Sutherland, Defoe, 2nd ed. (London, 1937), p. 239.
Note 2 in page 399 Although my study differs from his in most respects, I have profited from Edwin B. Benjamin, “Symbolic Elements in Robinson Crusoe,” PQ, xxx (1951), 206–211, who considers the book to be a “symbolic account of a spiritual experience.” See his nn. 2, 4, and 6 for bibliography of earlier discussions of moral, religious, philosophical, and allegorical elements.
Note 3 in page 399 AU references are to the first edition, first issue of each volume. Volume in—the Serious Reflections—has a second series of page numbers; references to that volume designate the series in lower case Roman.
Note 4 in page 399 iii, [A6]; cf. iii, 117.
Note 5 in page 400 In The Family Instructor (1718; repr. Bridgeport, 1814), Defoe frequently uses these terms in this more general sense: pp. 31, 84, 125, 133, 145, 225.
Note 6 in page 400 In his preacher's handbook, Tropologia, or Key to Unlock Scriptural Metaphors (London, 1684), i, 200, Benjamin Keach, well-known Baptist Divine and friend of Bunyan, whose works Defoe might well have known, distinguishes between “simple” and “allusive” allegories: “The Simple we call such as are taken from any natural things. The Allusive we call such as respect other things, whether Words or Facts, and are from thence deduced into a translated description.” Compare Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, i, in J. E. Spingarn, ed., Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (Bloomington, Ind., 1957), i, 7: “allusive, or parabolicall [narrative], is a narration applied onely to expresse some speciall purpose or conceit,” which “tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered.”
Note 7 in page 400 The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), p. 143.
Note 8 in page 400 Other allusions to God as father through the nexus of this conception as creator: i, 256,ii, 180; Family Instructor, pp. 34, 48; Keach, i, 67, 171, and esp.ii, 1–5.
Note 9 in page 400 So John Trapp, A Commentary on the New Testament (2nd ed., London, 1656, repr. 1868), pp. 328–329, and Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (London, 1706, 1st American ed., Philadelphia, 1828), v, 578 ff. Defoe alludes to the parable in the same general sense in Family Instructor, p. 241.
Note 10 in page 400 Henry, v, 578: “The parable represents God as a common Father to all mankind; to the whole family of Adam; we are all his of spring; have all one Father, and one God created us, Mai. 2.10.”
Note 11 in page 401 Representative occurrences of the term are found in i, 3, 195, ii, 11, 352, iii, 18, 191. Alternative terms, of course, are “happy” and “happiness,” i, 2, 3, 4, 132,ii, 352, iii, 18. See also John M. Steadman, “Felicity and End in Renaissance Epic and Ethics,” JHI, xxiii (1962), 117–132.
Note 12 in page 401 i, 15; cf. i, 2, 3, 4, 39, 43, 106, ii, 7. In explication of Gen. ii.3–15 Henry (i, 32–33) dwells upon the happiness and pleasure of Eden, and upon its fitness as a “calling” for Adam.
Note 13 in page 401 Also i, 17, 39. “Father's house” occurs with great frequency from Genesis through Acts. “Native country” only in Jeremiah xxii.10, but frequently in patristic and later literature, usually in combination with the image of the wayfarer. See its use in Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (Indianapolis, 1958), pp. 9, 10.
Note 14 in page 401 Compare Pope's philosophical use of the phrase, “An Essay on Man,” ii, 3.
Note 15 in page 402 See also i, 131, ii, 5, 216, 218, iii, 18. In the Bible, wandering is associated principally with the Children of Israel, disobedient and grumbling against God, in the Wilderness of Sinai before coming into possession of Canaan, the Land of Promise. That Crusoe is implying an analogy between his situation and that of the Children of Israel is suggested by his repeated allusion to Psalm lxxviii.19 [“Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?”] (i, 110, 153, 175), his statement (i, 132–133) that he was a “Prisoner … in an uninhabited Wilderness, without Redemption,” his reference to his “bondage” (i, 119), his “Captivity” (i, 162, 330), and his “Deliverance” (see below). For the motif of the sinner as wanderer in emblem literature, see Schola Cordis, trans. Christopher Harvey (London, 1647), ode xi [in Francis Quarles, The School of the Heart; or, the Heart of Itself Gone Away from God: Brought Back Again to Him; and Instructed by Him (London, 1845), p. 46].
Note 16 in page 402 Cf. Crusoe's statement (ii, 251) that his was “the Notion of a mad rambling Boy.” Henry, commenting on the parable of the Prodigal Son (v, 580), says that “A sinful state is a state of madness and frenzy. … Sinners, like those that are mad, destroy themselves with foolish lusts … and they are, of all diseased persons, most enemies to their own cure.” Keach (Pt. ii, Bk. iv, p. 231) says that wicked men are mad. Cf. Eccles. ix.3: “the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart.”
Note 17 in page 402 Crusoe employs the metaphor of life as voyage or journey also at ii, 285, 373, and iii, 193, 205. Defoe uses it in “An Appeal to Honor and Justice,” quoted in Sutherland, p. 211, and in a letter quoted in William Lee, Daniel Defoe (London, 1869), i, 459. For backgrounds of pilgrimage literature, and examples of land and sea journeys to heaven, see G. Ehrismann, “Religionsgeschichtliche Beiträge zum germanischen Frühchristentum,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, xxxv (1909), 209–239. General backgrounds are discussed in Joseph B. Collins, “The Mystical Pilgrimage of Life,” in Christian Mysticism in the Elizabethan Age (Baltimore, Md., 1940), pp. 64–70. James B. Wharey gives a long list of works in pilgrimage literature in A Study of the Sources of Bunyan's Allegories (Baltimore, Md., 1904), pp. 99–135. Haller, pp. 143–153, notes the frequency of occurrence of images of wayfaring and warfaring in Puritan literature of piety, such as sermons and spiritual autobiographies. The soul is considered as ship frequently in the emblem books; e.g., see Quarles, Emblems Divine and Moral (London, 1684), pp. 168–171 (in, xi), George Wither, A Collection of Emblèmes Ancient and Moderne (London, 1735), pp. 13, 37, 221, and Henry Hawkins, Partheneia Sacra (Paris, 1633), p. 122. Keach, iv, 64–66, presents a detailed and explicit analysis of the metaphor for the use of preachers.
Note 18 in page 402 See also i, 2, 169, 230, ii, 8, 249, 251. Henry repeatedly uses the word as he discusses the Prodigal, saying that we should observe “his Hot and ramble when he was a prodigal” (v, 578), and (v, 579) that “the condition of the prodigal in this ramble of his represents to us a sinful state”; later (v, 580) he considers the son's “return from this ramble,” and finally (v, 583) imagines his father as saying “this my son was dead, when he was in his ramble.”
Note 19 in page 402 This not only sustains and preserves the essential character of the original sin (i, 230), but reflects the nature of Satan, who is of “busie restless Inclination” (iii, ii, 32).
Note 20 in page 402 This appears not only from the general implications of the metaphor, but also from the very language Crusoe uses relative to the individual terms of the metaphor. At the beginning (i, 2) he associates his “wandring Inclination” with “something fatal in that Propension of Nature tending directly to the Life of Misery which was to befal me.” Later (ii, 1–2), just as he speaks of Ms “native Propensity to rambling,” so he asserts (iii, ii, 33) that “Our doing Evil is from the native Propensity of our Wills.”
Note 21 in page 403 For fuller discussion and references, see “The Triple Equation,” in Elizabeth Pope, Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem (Baltimore, Md., 1947), pp. 51–69, and Donald R. Howard, The Three Temptations (Princeton, N. J., 1966).
Note 22 in page 403 A Plain and Familiar Explication … of all the Hard Texts of the Whole Divine Scripture (London, 1631–32; rev. ed., 1838), ii, 535.
Note 23 in page 403 Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments (London, 1632; repr. Edinburgh, 1770), iii, 65–66.
Note 24 in page 403 Commentary upon the New Testament, p. 727.
Note 25 in page 403 “Pride, Luxury, Ambition and Envy” (i, 3); “the Greatness, the Authority, the Riches and the Pleasures,” and “our Ambition, our Particular Pride, our Avarice, our Vanity, and our Sensuality” (ii, 352); “Pride, Ambition, Avarice, and Luxury” (ii, 360); “Ambition, Pride, or Avarice” (in, 38); “Avarice, Ambition, and Rage” (in, 255); “Pride, Self-opinion, and Personal-prejudice” (iii, 262); “Pride, Avarice, Ambition, Revenge” (iii, ii, 38).
Note 26 in page 404 Cf. Genesis ii.8–10.
Note 27 in page 404 An allusion to Proverbs xxxvii.20: “Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of men are never satisfied.” Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (London, 1685; repr. 1848), ii, 267, explicitly relates this text to that of I John ii. 16 and interprets the eyes as desires which work through all the senses. See also Trapp, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (London, 1682; repr. 1867), iii, 129, and Henry, iii, 762.
Note 28 in page 404 Several circumstances suggest the possibility that Xury may be in some sense and to some degree a Christ-figure; this in turn suggests the speculation that the name may be derived from a transliteration of the Greek monogram ($) for Christ. This may be an appropriate place to ponder also the possible significance of Crusoe's name. In the first paragraph of The Life and Adventures Crusoe—presumably with point, but without further explicit comment—says that his family name derives from the German of Bremen, where “I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called … Crusoe” (i, [1]). Now, Defoe knew at least five languages (John R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World, Chicago, 1958, pp. 40, 73), including what he called “The Dutch.” He may not have been unaware that Kreutz is the German for “cross” (of a sword, an anchor, or a mast) or “crucifix,” and that it suggests kreutzen, “to cross” or “to cruise.” Naer sounds very much like the comparative form, näher, of the adjective and adverb, nähe, meaning “near” or “close,” and suggests the verb nähern, meaning “to journey” or “to approach.” The compound suggests kreulzzug, “crusade.” The point is that in Crusoe's name we may have an etymological intimation that he is to be regarded as the Christian wayfarer, and that his Life and Adventures is to be taken as a spiritual journey. Arthur Wellesley Secord, Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe, Univ. of Illinois Studies in Lang, and Lit., ix (1924), 42–43, records several of the linguistic facts above, and observes further: “A Cruso family of Leek (Wright, Defoe, p. 233), had for its motto, ‘sub cruce.‘ Cf. an imitation of Robinson Crusoe, Der Teutsche Robinson oder Bernhard Creutz (1722).”
Note 29 in page 405 Cf. i, 110, 175, 286.
Note 30 in page 405 Cf. iii, 32, 83, 262, and Benjamin, p. 210.
Note 31 in page 405 See i, 156, 160, 169–170, 185–186, ii, 351–352.
Note 32 in page 405 See i, 131.
Note 33 in page 405 Cf. i, 66, 152.
Note 34 in page 406 “I kept the 30th of Sept. in the same solemn Manner as before, being the Anniversary of my Landing on the Island, having now been there two Years” (i, 132); “I finish'd my fourth Year in this Place, and kept my Anniversary with the same Devotion, and with as much Comfort as ever before” (i, 151); “I kept the [twenty-seventh] Anniversary of my Landing here with the same Thankfulness to God for his Mercies, as at first” (i, 272).
Note 35 in page 407 See Rudolf G. Stamm, “Daniel Defoe: An Artist in the Puritan Tradition,” PQ, xv (1936), 225–246.
Note 36 in page 407 See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd ed., rev. (London, 1961), pp. 56–109, and references in n. 17, above.
Note 37 in page 407 See G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, N. J., 1965).