Daniel Defoe

  -  Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe and Modern Individualism

Lecture notes for an undergraduate course on the history of the "Self" in Western literature, including lectures on:

• • Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the Origins of the Novel

  • Providence and the Religious Element in Robinson Crusoe

  • Robinson Crusoe and Economic Man

  • Robinson Crusoe and Modern Natural Right

  -  Robinson Crusoe: An Introduction

An introduction to the novel, focusing on: the context of the origins of the "novel" genre; Robinson Crusoe's relation to the tradition of spiritual biography and allegory; and the evocation within the novel of the principles of modern natural philosophy and modern political philosophy.

 Robinson Crusoe (Great Books Overview)

Defoe’s novel is an oscillation between a search for a Divine providential meaning in the plights of existence and a more secular interpretation of phenomena. The essay shows how Crusoe as narrator tries to reflect back on his journey as a sort of spiritual self-discovery; however, his own actions and deepest passions (in the form of his naturalistic interpretation of events on the island as well as his excessive attachment to wealth) undermine this spiritual orientation. This oscillation between the explanatory frameworks offered by Christianity and secular modernity, I assert, make the novel still relevant and powerful for us today.

See also: "Robinson Crusoe and Modernity"

An interpretation of the Daniel Defoe’s novel in relation to the first wave of modernity as articulated in the natural philosophy of Francis Bacon and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke; published in The Imaginative Conservative (June 2020) 

 Moll Flanders (1722)

  -  Ian Johnston, Lecture on Robinson Crusoe

  -  Chasing Crusoe 

(multi-media site outlining the novel and real life experience of Alexander Selkirk)