KROPF, Carl Raymond, 1939- DEFOE AS PURITAN NOVELIST. the Ohio
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received ® 8-15,343 KROPF, Carl Raymond, 1939- DEFOE AS PURITAN NOVELIST. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Carl Raymond Kropf 1 9 6 8 DEFOE AS PURITAN NOVELIST DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Carl Raymond Kropf, B.A., M.A, The Ohio State University 1 9 6 8 Approved by t Adviser Department of English VITA December 7, 1939 B o m - Canton, Ohio 1961 ........... B.A., Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio 1961-1962 . Teacher, Cleveland Public Schools, Ohio 1962-1963 . Teaching Assistant, Kent State University Kent, Ohio 1963 ......... M.A., Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 1963-1965 . Assistant Instructor, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1965-1968 . Teaching Assistant, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1968 ..... Ph.D., Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Major Field: Eighteenth-Century English Literature TABLE OF CONTENTS Vita....................................................... ii Introduction............................................. 1 Chapter I. Defoe and Puritan. Metaphors.................... 4 II. Robinson Crusoe................................ 35 III. Colonel Jack................... 76 IV. Roxana. .............................. 103 V. Moll Flanders................................. 142 VI. Conclusions............... 176 List of Works Cited.................................... 100 INTRODUCTION The following discussion is the third book-length treatment of the relation of Defoe's major novels to con temporary Puritan beliefs. The first, G.A. Starr's Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography, treats the novels as they use conventional events, metaphors, and themes commonly found in Puritan diaries and autobiographies. The second is J. Paul Hunter's The Reluctant Pilgrim, which deals exclu sively with Robinson Crusoe and the importance of the Bibli cal allusions and metaphors in that work. VTherever possible I have avoided duplicating these authors' works, and the reader should consult them for additional discussion of the importance of Puritan conventions to Defoe's fiction. My own treatment is concerned with_the way Puritan theories of sin and salvation determined the psychology of Defoe's characters. According to Puritan theories, the psy chologies of the sinner and saint were distinctly different, and I think that those theories furnish the key to much that is superficially confusing in the novels. For example, the point of view from which the novel is written neces sarily depends on the psychology of the narrator and is therefore determined by his spiritual condition. Accor dingly, it is impossible to resolve the question of point of view in Moll Flanders without understanding how contem- porary readers would have conceived of the psychology of a woman in Moll’s spiritual condition. The following chap ters are devoted to these and related problems. I have limited my discussion to Defoe's four major novels because it seems to me that in them Defoe's primary purpose was to dramatize the effect of sin and salvation on Character. Perhaps this is least true of Colonel Jack, for Jack's character is no doubt illustrative of the temporal nature of a gentleman as well as of spiritual goodness. The most clearly spiritual of these novels is Roxana, for the extensive moralizing in the novel inevitably places em phasis on spiritual matters. More importantly, throughout her career Roxana conforms to the Puritan conception of a fallen woman, and contemporary readers would almost cer tainly have read the novel primarily as a study of sin and only incidentally as another of the popular criminal bio graphies. It might have been interesting and profitable to have included in this study some of Defoe's other well known works such as A Journal of the Plague Year or Captain Singleton. These have been excluded because their focus, as in Plague Year, is not- on character development, or be cause they dramatize the character primarily as a temporal instead of a spiritual being. Secondly, they have been omitted because, as I suggest in my final remarks, the four novels examined are distinctly related in both theme and structure and therefore form an easily managed and logical unit for critical discussion. A note shovild be added here on the terms used in the following chapters. I have used the label "Puritan” to in clude. all those who believed that the Anglical Church re tained too much of Catholicism to warrant their loyalty. Among this group were many sects and shades of belief, but those distinctions are not relevant to my purposes here. I am also aware that "spiritualizing" was by no means pecul iar to Puritans. The Anglican Robert Boyle, for example, wrote a volume of meditations in which he spiritualized events. But what is important in the following discussion is that Puritans were well known for their habit of spirit ualizing and that Defoe, himself a Puritan, read and wrote literature in that tradition. CHAPTER X Defoe and Puritan Metaphors In 1670 John Eachard bemoaned in print the current contempt of the clergy and among other things charged: The first main thing, I say, that makes so many sermons so ridiculous, and the preachers of them so much disparaged and undervalued, is .SH inconsiderate use of frightful Metaphors: which making such "a remarlcable impression upon the ears, and leaving such a jarring twang be hind them, are oftentimes remembered to the discredit of the Minister as long as he contin ues in the parish. I have heard the very children in the streets, and the little boys close about the fire, re-, fresh themselves strangely but with the repiti- tion of a few of such far-fetched and odd sounding expressions. If the metaphors used in sermons were anywhere near what Eachard indicates, they must have been dreadful indeed. One minister, Eachard recalls, had discovered that a "man’s Soul was like an Oyster. For, says he in his prayer, ’Our souls are constantly gaping after thee, 0 Lord! yea, verily, our souls do gape, even as an oyster gapeth! ’ T.3. /John Eachard7, "The Grounds & Occasions Of The Contempt of The Clergy and Religion Enquired into" (London, 1670), in An English Garner, ed. Edward Arber (London 1877- 83), VII, 271. 2VII, 275. J. Goodman, The Penitent Pardoned, (London, 1679), p. 13, complains that the" misuse of metaphors has A 5 Even the conversation of the common people is filled with the indiscriminate use of metaphors: ...as for the common sort of people that are addicted to this sort of expression in their discourses; away presently to both the Indies! rake heaven and earth! down to the bottom of the sea! then tumble over all Arts and Sciences! ransack all shops and warehouses! spare neither camp nor city, but that they will have them! So fond are such deceived ones of these same gay words, that they count all discourses empty, dull, and cloudy; unless bespangled with these glitterings. Perhaps one should allow for a trifle of ecclesias tical exaggeration in these complaints, but they indicate one of the features of Defoe's audience which is too fre quently ignored. Eachard*s complaints are directed only at the abuse of metaphor, not at its use in general, for by his time metaphorical expression was a respected and deeply entrenched habit in religious literature and in sermons. For his contemporary readers Defoe’s novels must have been far richer in meaning than they are for us, for Defoe him self grew up in the Puritan tradition and made free use of the metaphors which were part of it. This study is an attempt to explicate some of the novels by as nearly as possible recovering the conventions of Puritan religious literature and the point of view of Defoe*s contemporary introduced questionable doctrine in the church, and that some ministers have '’gone a pitch beyond all sober sense'1 in their use. 3V1I, 272. 6 reader. In the process perhaps I can suggest some solu tions to the knotty problems of point of view, irony, and meaning in Defoe’s major novels which puzzle modern readers. There were many reasons for the popularity of meta phor in religious literature, but most obvious among them are the Puritans’ sense of the immediacy of God and the re sultant concept of the nature of reality. Speaking of man’s relationship to God, Thomas Goodwin writes: God is the Father of all Spirits: and of the Spirits of his own Children upon a double Creation. And if the Fathers of our Bodies corrected us, and had Power to do it with bodily Punishment, and bodily Instruments; do we think that our Souls which lie naked before God (Heb. 4. 13.) are not as imme diately subject and exposed to his Correc tion, as a Father of Spirits ? And if so, that then~he may and doth sometimes chuse to correct even his own Children with no other Rods but of his own? which are the immedi ate Emanations, Streamings and Dartings of his own Displeasure: which when they feel, they wax pale and wan, and wander up and down, like unto Ghosts in Hell, as if they were cut off by his Hand. Th analogy drawn here between earthly and heavenly fathers is a common one and has interesting implications for Robinson Crusoe, who makes a great point of the sinfulness of his rebellion against his father. More immediately in teresting is that Goodwin regards God as a direct force in human affairs. Life on this earth was regarded as extremely ^The Works of Thomas Goodwin, P.P. in 4 vols (London, 1681-97), III, 566. Future references are given in the text. hazardous, full of all sorts of dangers both physical and spiritual, and if one managed to avoid most of them, it was only because of God’s special protection.