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The Soul's Imaginings: Daniel Defoe, William Cowper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Patricia Meyer Spacks
Patricia Meyer Spacks*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachussets
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Abstract

The authors of eighteenth-century spiritual autobiographies and of their fictional imitations demonstrate the complex functions of imagination as a component of the spiritual life and of its records. Robinson Crusoe and William Cowper’s Memoir (1816) both delineate detailed sequences of emotional and imaginative development as the foundation of religious experience. Crusoe progresses to self-understanding by recognizing and mastering his own fear and anger and developing his capacity for love and by enlarging the resources of his imagination. Cowper asserts that his conversion and the Christian fellowship that followed it dominate his experience, but his account, with dark imagistic undertones, may also be read as revealing the persistence of despair. The unconscious shaping which produces this counter-pattern enriches the memoir’s implication. In novel and autobiography alike, the divergence between what the author asserts and what he suggests, reflecting varying possibilities of the imagination, can generate fruitful literary effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , May 1976 , pp. 420 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1976

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References

Notes

1 The Spectator, ed. G. Gregory Smith. 4 vols. (London: Dent. n.d.). No. 413: iii. 63.

2 The 2 most widely accepted “readings” of Robinson Crusoe concentrate on its status as “spiritual autobiography” and on Crusoe's role as exemplar of “economic man.” G. A. Starr. Defoe anil Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1965) and J. Paul Hunter. The Reluctant Pilgrim (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1966) have studied the novel as a religious document, a study supplemented by such essays as William H. Halewood. “Religion and Invention in Robinson Crusoe,” Essays in Criticism. 14 (1964). 339 51 : Martin J. Greif “The Conversion of Robinson Crusoe.” Similes in English Literature. 6 (1966). 551–74: Robert W. Ayers. “Robinson Crusoe: ‘Allusive Allegorick History.‘” PMLA. 82 (1967). 399 407: Edwin B. Benjamin. “Symbolic Elements in Robinson Crusoe.” Philological Quarterly. 30 (1951 ). 206–11. The economic interpretation has been richly expounded in lan Watt. The Rise of the Norel: Studies in Defoe. Richardson, and Fielding (London : Chatto & Windus, 1957) and Maximillian E. Novak. Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1962). Both interpretations direct attention to important aspects of the novel: I wish to refute neither. My own focus on Crusoe's emotional and imaginative experience derives, however, from the assumption that, whatever else the novel may be. it can be fundamentally understood as coming out of the tradition of spiritual autobiography.

3 Daniel Defoe. The Life & Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Defoe's Writings. Shakespeare Head Ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. n.d.). vii. 39. Subsequent references to the novel, taken from this edition, will be incorporated in the text.

4 The Imagination as a Means of Grace: Locke and the Aesthetics of Romanticism (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1960). p. 21.

5 Benjamin Boyce long ago observed that “this book, in its central, famous part, is loaded with fear.” “The Question of Emotion in Defoe,” Studies in Philology, 50 (1953). 51. He did not speculate about the significance of this emotion.

6 Frank Ellis, who sees the “idea of man's isolation” as the organizing theme of the novel, has examined some of Crusoe's terrors in relation to this theme. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969), Introd. An even fuller investigation of the ramifications of fear in Robinson Crusoe is contained in Homer O. Brown's brilliant essay, “The Displaced Self in the Novels of Daniel Defoe.” ELH. 38 (1971). 562–91. Seeing the relation between Crusoe's fear and his alienation. Brown points to his “fear of solipsism and anonymity; alternately, fear of being captured. ‘eaten’ by the other” (p. 569).

7 “The island, which is an extension of himself, has dark areas Robinson has never explored; he is constantly startled by versions of himself, the voice of the parrot, the dying goat.” Brown, p. 573.

8 Watt comments on how “egocentric” are Crusoe's relations with Friday, seeing the interchange between the two as entirely based on patronage (Rise of the Novel, pp. 71 72).

9 Not only does Friday clearly enlarge Crusoe's emotional life, but the savage's later encounter with his father unmistakably demonstrates his great capacity for love. Friday's inarticulate but active filial devotion contrasts sharply with Crusoe's relatively sterile acknowledgments of his father's Tightness, unaccompanied by clear evidence of love.

10 U See James Sutherland. Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1971). p. 139.

11 He has. of course, encountered and killed wild animals in his pre-island days. But they did not immediately threaten him: he killed for sport, or to impress natives, or to protect against possible danger, or for the sake of skins.

12 I am essentially in agreement with those who see Crusoe as a romantic forced to come to terms with reality. George Levine comments, “Admiring the middle station and the energies that earn it, Defoe largely invents a form that will become central to the realistic novel: the story of the romantic youth who must learn to deal with reality.” “Realism Reconsidered,” The Theory of the Novel: New Essays, ed. John Halperin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1974). p. 245. Maximilian Novak describes Crusoe as “a prototype of Shaw's Bluntschli—the hero raised as a tradesman but with a romantic temperament.” “Robinson Crusoe's Original Sin.” “Studies in English Literature, 1, No. 3 (1961 ). 20. It seems important, though, to add that Crusoe conquers his romantic tendencies by exploring their full possibilities.

13 For detailed accounts of the 17th-century tradition of spiritual autobiography, see Starr (n. 2 above) and Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1969).

14 “The Autobiographer's Art.” Journal oj'Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 27 (1968), 224–25. Stephen Shapiro, on the other hand, believes that “There is a sense in which all auto biographers are unreliable narrators.” “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography.” Comparative Literature Studies. 5 (1969), 434.

15 The Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1968). pp. 68–70.

16 “The occurrence of so extensive a fantasy life … in some instances may enhance the establishment of a clear distinction between reality and fantasy.” Jerome L. Singer, Daydreaming: An Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Experience (New York: Random. 1966). p. 27.

17 Autobiography as Narrative.“ Michigan Quarterly Review. 3 (1964). 211. 212.

18 The Memoir was composed in 1766 or 1767 and sent to Martin Madan in Sept. 1767. See Charles Ryskamp. William Cowper of the Inner Temple. Esq. (Cambridge. Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press. 1959). p. 174.

19 Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, Esq. 2nd American ed. (Newburgh: P. B. Pratt. 1817). Subsequent references, from this edition, will be incorporated in the text.

20 Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1960). p. 52. Pascal refers this insight specifically to the implications of autobiographies written between 1782 and 1831, but it surely applies also to earlier works.

21 Versions of the Self: Studies in English Autobiography from John Bunyan to John Stuart Mill (New York: Basic. 1966), pp. 165, 139.

22 See Michael V. DePorte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift. Sterne, and Augustan Ideas of Madness (San Marino: The Huntington Library. 1974). p. 21 et passim.

23 Maurice J. Quinlan. William Cowper: A Critical Life (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 1953). p. 91.

24 “Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography.” New Literary History. I (1970). 490.

25 Barrett John Mandel. “Autobiography—Reflection Trained on Mystery.” Prairie Schooner. 46 (1972). 326.