True Author Of The Work Daniel Defoe example essay topic

Daniel 'The True-Born Englishman' Defoe (1660-1731) Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660, probably in September, third child and first son of James and Mary Defoe. Daniel received a very good education, as his father hoped he would become a minister, but Daniel wasn't interested. His family were Dissenters, Presbyterians to be precise, and those sects were being persecuted a bit at this time, so maybe Daniel had the right idea. He was always very tolerant of others' religious ideas himself. His mother died when he was ten, and his father sent him to a boarding school, after which he attended Morton's Academy, as he could not graduate from Oxford or Cambridge without taking an oath of loyalty to the Church of England. He was a very good student, and his teacher, the Reverend Mr. Norton himself, would later show up as a character in some of Daniel's fiction.

Daniel graduated in 1679, and by then he'd pretty much decided against the ministry, though he wrote and spoke in favor of the Dissenters all his life. 1703 Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, a Tory government official, employed Defoe as a spy. With the support of the government, Defoe started the newspaper, The Review. Published between 1704 and 1713, the newspaper appeared three times a week. As well as carrying commercial advertising The Review reported on political and social issues. Defoe also wrote several pamphlets for Harley attacking the political opposition.

The Whigs took Defoe court and this resulted in him serving another prison sentence. He was nearly sixty when he turned to writing novels. In 1719 he published his famous Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed by two less engrossing sequels. Robinson Crusoe describes the daily life of a man stuck on a desert island. Although there are exciting episodes in the novel Crusoe rescuing his man Friday from cannibals its main interest derives from the way in which Crusoe overcomes the extraordinary difficulties of life on the island while preserving his human integrity.

Robinson Crusoe is considered by some critics to be the first true novel in English. Defoe's great novels were not published under his name but as authentic memoirs, with the intention of gulling his readers into thinking his fictions true. Two excellent examples of his semi historical recreations are the picaresque adventure Moll Flanders (1722), the story of a London prostitute and thief, and an account of the 1665 great plague in London entitled A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). Defoe's writing is always straightforward and vivid, with an astonishing concern for circumstantial detail. His other major works include Captain Singleton (1720), Colonel Jack (1722), Roxana (1724), and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27).

In 1724 A General History of the Pirates by a Captain Charles Johnson was published; it was not until 200 years later that Defoe was discovered to be the true author of the work Daniel Defoe died in 1731. The bubonic plague also known as Black Death In the early 1330's an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China. Plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly.

Plague causes fever and a painful swelling of the lymph glands called buboes, which is how it gets its name. The disease also causes spots on the skin that are red at first and then turn black. Since China was one of the busiest of the world's trading nations, it was only a matter of time before the outbreak of plague in China spread to western Asia and Europe. In October of 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links in trade with China. When the ships docked in Sicily, many of those on board were already dying of plague. Within days the disease spread to the city and the surrounding countryside "Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city.

But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. Fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the sick, and monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were stricken, too. Bodies were left in empty houses, and there was no one to give them a Christian burial". By the following August 1348, the plague had spread as far north as England, where people called it "The Black Death" because of the black spots it produced on the skin.

A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and Medieval medicine had nothing to fight it. In winter the disease seemed to disappear, but only because fleas -- which were now helping to carry it from person to person -- are dormant then. Each spring, the plague attacked again, killing new victims. After five years 25 million people were dead -- one-third of Europe's people. Even when the worst was over, smaller outbreaks continued, not just for years, but for centuries. The survivors lived in constant fear of the plague's return, and the disease did not disappear until the 1600's.

Medieval society never recovered from the results of the plague. So many people had died that there were serious labor shortages all over Europe. This led workers to demand higher wages, but landlords refused those demands. By the end of the 1300's peasant revolts broke out in England, France, Belgium and Italy. The disease took its toll on the church as well. People throughout Christendom had prayed devoutly for deliverance from the plague.

Why hadn't those prayers been answered? A new period of political turmoil and philosophical questioning lay ahead.