Robinson Crusoe - Mille feuilles

436 pages

English language

Published Aug. 25, 1994 by Norton.

ISBN:: 978-0-393-96452-3
OCLC Number:: 27429363

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer) – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad (roughly resembling Tobago), encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra", now part of Chile, which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in …

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer) – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad (roughly resembling Tobago), encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra", now part of Chile, which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television, and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade.

41 editions

Ji FU reviewed Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

18th century Christian Fiction

4 stars

I really liked Robinson Crusoe. Much more than I expected to. It had a much deeper spiritual component that I had not expected, though maybe religion was just always part of life for Europeans of the 1700s. Robin(son) was a disobedient young man, even if "a good guy" in the eyes of the world. When he was shipwrecked and landed on his island of despair he went from not caring about Religion, to being mad at God, to knowing God never existed, to praying for his needs, to celebrating a sabbath, to being thankful that he had survived, to actually reading his Bible, to a true personal relationship with Jesus to bringing the only man he met to the same, and struggling how to live as a Christian in the world God put him.

At one time I thought it may have been the best Christian Fiction I ever …

I really liked Robinson Crusoe. Much more than I expected to. It had a much deeper spiritual component that I had not expected, though maybe religion was just always part of life for Europeans of the 1700s. Robin(son) was a disobedient young man, even if "a good guy" in the eyes of the world. When he was shipwrecked and landed on his island of despair he went from not caring about Religion, to being mad at God, to knowing God never existed, to praying for his needs, to celebrating a sabbath, to being thankful that he had survived, to actually reading his Bible, to a true personal relationship with Jesus to bringing the only man he met to the same, and struggling how to live as a Christian in the world God put him.

At one time I thought it may have been the best Christian Fiction I ever read, it felt so much more real than dumb stories like the Left Behind series or radicicolous stories like the Amish Romance series, until the last third or so of the book when it got kind of racist and violent, and adamantly anti-Catholic. While there are many racist and violent people who call themselves Christians now-a-days I don't believe that was ever the plan of the prince of peace, and the Catholic Church is the Church He founded.

But even with all I am amazed how much Defoe kept me "turning the pages" of my audio book in a very interesting story, told almost completely without any additional characters. I have a hard time believing the claim that this was the first ever English novel, but it would make sense why all of the older stuff we read in school were plays (which were meant to be seen not read) and not novels.

Subjects

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
Crusoe, Robinson (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. -- Fiction