A Study On The Influence Of Deniel Defoe's News Experience On His Writing Concept

Daniel Defoe(1660-1731) is the founding father of British realistic novel and is called "Father of Novel in Britain and Europe". Defoe finished his first and well-acknowledged novel Robinson Crusoe in 1719. This piece of work has since been referred to as his representative novel and still exerts its influence to the world today. After that, Defoe wrote Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack and Roxana, etc.He has an unusual life experience. Defoe, before 59, was involved in a long career in news industry. He was crowned "Father of British News Industry" on account of his outstanding performance in this field.The research so far about Defoe in China takes several major angles:Defoe as the "spokesman for the bourgeoisie class", a feminism perspective and the perspective of colonial criticism. Studies about how Defoe's experience in news industry influences his literary creation are rare. This thesis is devoted to exploring his career experience in the news industry and the approaches of close reading of text and influence studies will be adopted to sort and analyze the unusual life experience of Daniel Defoe.This thesis first briefly introduces the unusual life experiences of Defoe, and then conducts close reading towards Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack and Roxana. It analyzes the two unique characteristics of Defoe's literary creation and his contribution to the realistic novel, finally concludes the significance of Defoe and his writing. The first section of this paper presents briefly Defoe's life experience, including his experience in news before 59 and his literary creation after 59. Section two analyzes the two unique features of Defoe's literary creation—biographical novel and desert island novel. Section three explores Defoe's contribution to the realistic novel in breaking previous rules, his truth-seeking attitude and emphasis on individual experience. Section four draws the significance of Defoe's creation from the perspectives of "significance of experience", "similarities between the documentary news industry and the literary trend of realism" and "emphasis on experience, reality awareness and conscious writing"This project lies in its conclusions drawn from the analysis of Defoe's unique life experience:Defoe's long engagement in news business had great influence on him as a person; when his career was shifted to be a writer, this experience also delivered influence onto his literary creation, thus revealing the value of real-life experience to realistic literary creation.