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"The Sum of Humane Misery"?: Defoe's Ambiguity toward Exile
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 50, Number 3, Summer 2010
- pp. 601-623
- 10.1353/sel.2010.0007
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is usually given a place in the literature of exile, but just as Crusoe is divided between a terrible loneliness and a pleasure in solitude, Defoe too equivocated on this subject. His career as a spy often turned his personal life into a form of exile. His fictions dramatized the experience: through the sufferings of his spy in A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris and the resolve of his Russian Prince in Siberia told in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, Defoe expresses the exile's longing for his home and acceptance of his fate.