Tag Archives: Robinson Crusoe

Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally

By Robin Bates | Published: December 10, 2023

Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Angus Fletcher, Charlotte Bronte, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, humanism, Jane Eyre, Le Cid, Pierre Corneille, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, soliloquies, Sorrows of Young Werther, To Kill a Mockingbird, transcendentalism, Wonderworks | Comments closed

Think of Work Sweat as “Odorous Oil”

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2022

Barrett Browning celebrates work in this sonnet, even as she alludes back to God’s curse on Adam in “Paradise Lost” and Genesis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Work", Daniel Defoe, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ian Watt, John Milton, Labor Day, Max Weber, Paradise Lost, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Rise of the Novel, Work | Comments closed

Crusoe and the American Work Ethic

By Robin Bates | Published: February 16, 2022

A Pakistani student looks at Americans and notes their obsession with time. One can see that same obsession in Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Dickory Cronke, Max Weber, Pakistan, prosperity theology, Protestant work ethic, R. H. Tawney, Time, Work | Comments closed

Marx & Engels on the Usefulness of Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: June 14, 2021

Marx and Engels see literature as playing a role in class conflict, just not the major role.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Friedrich Engels, Honoré de Balzac, Karl Marx | Comments closed

Reading Montaigne While Confined

By Robin Bates | Published: May 19, 2020

In “Gentleman in Moscow,” the count turns to “Robinson Crusoe” to figure out how to survive. Reading Montaigne is a mixed bag.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alexander Dumas, Amor Towles, Count of Monte Cristo, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Gentleman in Moscow, Michel de Montaigne, Miguel de Cervantes, quarantine | Comments closed

Robinson Crusoe Has ALL the Answers

By Robin Bates | Published: January 9, 2020

In Wilkie Collins’s “Moonstone,” the wonderfully realized house steward resorts to “Robinson Crusoe” to face all difficulties.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Moonstone, Wilkie Collins | Comments closed

The Origins of Crazy U.S. Work Ethic

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2018

New interpretation of “Robinson Crusoe” suggests that maybe Puritans not quite so much to blame for America’s insane work ethic as once thought.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Max Weber, Puritan work ethic, tobacco | Comments closed

Trump’s Crusoe Wall Goes Up in Airports

By Robin Bates | Published: January 29, 2017

This past weekend so a flurry of illegal and unconstitutional executive orders that created chaos in airports and elsewhere as travelers from certain countries found themselves in detention. Defoe captures versions of such dramas in “Robinson Crusoe.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Donald Trump, executive orders, immigrants, Steve Bannon | Comments closed

When Christianity Becomes a Money Cult

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2016

A new book, “The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream,” brings to mind Howard Nemerov’s poem “Boom!” The book’s author argues that prosperity theology is not an aberration but was present from the beginning of American Puritanism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Boom!", Adam Bede, Calvinism, Capitalism, Daniel Defoe, George Eliot, Howard Nemerov, Ian Watt, Max Weber, prosperity theology, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, theology of abundance | Comments closed