Daniel Defoe essays

Daniel Defoe essays Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660, he was the son of non-conformist, middle-class parents. The non-conformists or Dissenters were Protestant sects that opposed the official state religion of Anglicanism and consequently suffered persecution. At the age of fourteen his parents sent him to the famous academy at stoke Newngton kept by Charles Morton, where most of the students were Dissenters. The first decade of 1700s marked a period of increased political involvement for Defoe; he published perhaps his best-known verse, The True Born English Man (1701). In this work he satirized the prejudice of his fellow citizens and declared that the English were a race of Mongrels, bred from the castaways of Europe. In 1692 Defoe filled for bankruptcy, his debts mounting to over 17,000 pounds; Defoe was haunted throughout his life by unsatisfied debt collectors. He began to experiment with realistic dialogue, setting and characterization in The Family Structor (1715) one of his many books on religious and moral conduct. He was called the father of English Novel, his use of the first-person narrator and the development of his protagonists often undercut his normal themes, resulting in a group of stories whose plots flatly contradict their endings. Despite the uncertainty of Defoes intentions most contemporary critics agree that in Roxana novel the author was writing an unfavorable critique of capitalistic society, and not simply stressing the virtues of a moral life. Roxana was Defoes last major work of fiction and analyzing it we find three notables elements of style which are the point of view about Marriage, Satire and Narrative Techniques, they are in constantly use in this novel. First we are going to discuss The Satire, Roxana has two opposing modes of existence one spatial and the other temporal, and these are essential to the books social satire. Roxana is the mistress of a Ger ...