The fathers of the English novel

Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson are regarded as the fathers of the English novel. The
novel of that time was about everything that could affect social status and was directed to a
bourgeois public.

The writer’s aim

The writer’s aim was to write in a simple way allowing people to understand him, even the
less well educated readers. Since there was no more a patron but a bookseller to pay the
writers, speed and copiousness became the most important economic virtues.

The message of the novel

The major message of the novel was the sense of reward and punishment, linked to the
Puritan ethics of the middle classes. Even if some hints at social justice can be found in
Defoe.

The characters

The writer aimed at realism. He tried to make a novel more real by portraying different
human experiences, by introducing as subject a “bourgeois man” who was always the hero
of the novel, struggling for survival or social success.
The main characters of the novel can be divided into two groups:
- people who believe in reason such as Robinson Crusoe
- people who cannot control their passions and become more important than reason
such as Moll Flanders,
Lastly, characters were named with contemporary names to increase realism.

The narrative technique

The writer was omnipresent and the narrator could be a first or a third person narrator.
A chronological sequence of events was used, and some references to particular times of
the year and of the day were made.

The setting

Time and place were a very important aspect of the novel, for this reason the writers used to
make references to names of the streets and towns, together with descriptions of interiors
that helped making the narrative more realistic

DANIEL DEFOE

Daniel Defoe was born in 1660 into a family of Dissenters, Protestants which refused the
authority of the Church of England.
He studied practical subjects and his father wanted a religious career for him, but Defoe
began as an apprentice and then opened a business himself. After suffering two
bankruptcies, he began working as a journalist, his greatest achievement was writing for The
Review. Defoe became a famous and well paid intellectual by writing political essays and
pamphlets till the reign of Queen Anne. The Queen didn’t like his attitude and had him
arrested, tries and imprisoned. Later he became a secret agent for the government and at
the age of 60, started writing novels.
In 1719, he published Robinson Crusoe, then Captain Singleton and the 1722 was the year
of Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack.
Defoe’s last novel was Roxana, which was about a woman that uses her beauty to obtain
what she wants.
With the money he earned, he lived a comfortable life till his death in 1731.

Defoe’s novels

His narrative technique became the basis for the development of the realistic novel. Defoe’s
novels are fictional autobiographies, stories that seem real thanks to the details and
memories given by the protagonist.
Usually novels are preceded by a preface which emphasizes the reality of the story and
usually is composed by a series of episodes linked together by the “hero” which is the main
character.
Defoe uses a first person narration and characters are usually presented from the inside and
through their action rather than from the outside. They usually appear in isolation that can be
physical as in Robinson Crusoe or social as in Moll Flanders.