Daniel Defoe, vita e opere. PDF

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Descrizione autore Daniel Defoe, con relative opere in lingua inglese....

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Compare the characters of Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe: similarities and differencescharacter, textualization. Daniel Defoe tells the story of Robinson, a boy who loves sea and freedom, who feels the strong desire to travel the world but is hindered in his projects by a father too severe. He decides to escape from home at the age of nineteen, running into a series of adventures. He was first imprisoned by the pirates of Salé for a few months, then managed to escape to Brazil, where he began to manage a plantation. He travels back to Venezuela on a ship with the aim of buying slaves, but the boat sinks before reaching its destination. Robinson is the only survivor of the shipwreck. Refugee on a desert island, he remains there for twenty-eight years. For twelve years the only living being with whom he communicates is a talking parrot. Robinson Crusoe adapts to life on the island trying to survive in the best way, noting in a diary what happens to him day by day. After twelve years of complete isolation, he discovers by chance that he is not alone on the island, there are some tribes of cannibals who could kill him by starvation. So, after killing them one by one, Robinson decides to keep a prisoner, and calls him "Friday" (the day when the two met). At the wild Robinson teaches how to speak English and reads the Bible to lead him to Christianity. After the forced exile on the island, which lasted twenty-eight years, Robinson returns to England and discovers he has amassed a fortune thanks to the fertile Brazilian plantations. After selling the plantations, Robinson retires to live on the island he has colonized and becomes Governor.

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This novel is inspired by the very popular history of the era, that of the Dutch sailor Alexander Selkirk, who was said to have lived for four years in a desert island, only to return home. Robinson Crusoe reflects very much the world of Defoe, as the protagonist of the novel also the author is "oppressed" by his father because he wants to ensure a safe job and where he earns. Defoe in fact already has the work assured to the Protestant religion ministry, but he wants to write for the newspaper. On the desert island Robinson is completely alone, at the mercy of events, and realizes that he can not have dominion over all things. Although steeped in adventure and practical sense, Defoe's novel also tells the spiritual path of a man who in solitude reflects on the existence of himself in comparison to God. Born in a prison, Moll Flanders is then a prostitute, married five times (one with her own half-brother), she knows splendor and misery and, having become a thief, is deported to Virginia. His adventures (only a small part actually happened to a certain Mary Frith called Moll) pretend themselves told by the same woman, now old, rich and repentant. Defoe was inspired by a true story, in fact Moll really existed and was called Mary Frith, called "Moll la tagliaborse" a famous thief of the 17th century (1584-1659) who literally cut the pockets and purses from the clothes of the rich passers-by. Unlike the character of Defoe, he seems not to look good, he dressed in male clothes, smoked (unthinkable at the time for a respectable woman) and did not fail to be involved in prostitution tours. To escape the prison of Newgate (which Defoe knew well, having stayed there for a year and a half) paid a rich bribe, but he died on a street in London. Moll Flanders, on the other hand, reflects a world where women are seen primarily as an object, or a person who does not have the same importance as men in society Defoe will not be reduced to prostitution, but the rest of the writer has lived in the first person, his life was marked by poverty that led him to the edge of despair and also for this reason he wrote the novels that we now consider the fathers of realistic English literature.

Daniel Defoe writes Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders with the intent to speak in real terms about the social and political problems of his time. 2

In fact, it is not about people of high nobility but of people of the people and the middle class, who can choose to pursue their dreams and oppose the wishes of parents like Robinson Crusoe or choose to live an easy and sometimes even incorrect life as Moll Flanders . What accumulates most the two protagonists of the novels of Defoe is that both are carriers of an important aspect that the man of the eighteenth century according to Defoe had to have: adaptation. In fact, Robinson Crusoe has the gift of knowing how to adapt to nature in all his travels, while Moll Flanders manages to adapt as a female figure in eighteenth-century London. Another common aspect of the two novels is that the two protagonists, after having faced various ups and downs, start a comfortable and better life than the previous one. Another common aspect of the two novels is that both are drawn from true stories and from real people, so as to give more reality to the story that Defoe tells. The aspect that differentiates the two protagonists more, in addition to the fact that they are of different sex, is that Moll Flanders at the end of his story feels repentant of his actions and starts a life completely from the beginning, with new expectations but above all start again a new life not with the fruit of his work but with his mother's dowry. Instead Robinson Crusoe, at the end of the novel lives a happy life but with what has been earned with his hard work during the twenty-eight years on the desert island. The two books are both carriers of moral teachings that Defoe tried to convey to the reader.

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