Main directions of the English Literature in the Early Middle ages

38.Daniel Defoe – the creator of realistic novels.DANIEL DEFOE is mostly remembered today as the author of “Robinson Crusoe”, but he wrote more than 500 other works that included pamphlets, novels, verse and non-fiction. His topics ranged from economics to crime and contraception. He’s probably the only English writer of note to be sentenced to three days in the pillory for publishing observations on religion deemed unacceptable by the government.“Crusoe” is widely regarded as the first real novel in the English language. Defoe is also arguably the first travel writer in English. “From London to Land’s End,” is a small piece of a much longer piece of travel writing that described most of England at that time, “A Journey Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain.” This work is so comprehensive and detailed, with descriptions of local towns and their pre-IndustrialRevolution manner of life, that the modern reader views it as a fascinating blend of travelogue and time-travel. “From London to Land’s End” has distinct similarities to Tolkien’s description of hobbits crossing the Shire, as the narrator takes to the Great Western Road, rides across a green and pleasant land, traverses the Downs and encounters mysterious standing stones erected by unknown ancient peoples. A fascinating digression is provided by his pause in one port to describe the Great Storm of 1703, which raged with hurricane-force winds for an entire week, destroying fleets of ships and flattening forests. A storm like this has not been seen in modern times and if a similar one were to occur, today it would wreak havoc beyond imaginingDefoe undoubtedly stretched the facts when it suited his purposes; he wrote under nearly two hundred different pen names. “Robinson Crusoe” was presented to the reading public as a factual narrative. The concept of writing a novel was so, well, novel at that time, that he was probably unsure how to proceed without claiming that his narratives were factual. “Journal of the Plague Year” is presented as an eyewitness account of the plague in London, written by a saddler who remained in the city and refused to flee during the pandemic of 1665.