On The “Entrepreneurial Hero” Of Defoe’s Novel

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe has been wildly concerned since it was published, it is not only loved by the people, but also competitively studied by literary critics.Because it is the most controversial novels of Defoe’s, so other biographical novels of Defoe such as Pirate Captain, Moore ? Flanders and Roxana has not been concerned a lot. These heroes of this series of biographical novels were born in the middle class. They had the common feature that which the hero succeed in the society with his virtue of personal power and made his “entrepreneurial dream” come true.They were normal people who were adventurous, optimistic and hardworking. And they had a wealth-oriented “entrepreneurial criteria”, they regarded the personal value as the most important thing, but realized their personal interests in the contradiction of“goodness” and “evil”. They were the entrepreneurial hero in economical transition.The Characters of These “entrepreneurial heroes” were not only with Defoe’s personal tone, but also impacted by specific social environment and the literary tradition. As a businessman, Defoe supported the development of commodity economy. The prevalence of individualism, the changing of economic structure, and ancient Greece and Rome inherited ocean culture provided psychological support and development space to make individuals achieve “entrepreneurial dream”. Impact of Picaresque novel provided fertile soil for realistic novel’s development. The “entrepreneurial hero” in Defoe’s novel overturned the people’s hero definitions. It not only took normal people as a “hero” to re-create, but also focused on description of women’s fate. It reflected the people’s economic ideology and socio-economic status in the British capitalist transition period.The Re-analysis of the novels of Defoe, not only can study Defoe’s comprehensively, but also contemplates of people’s mental status and social reality in the capitalism transition period of British in literature. Nowadays, with the rapid development of science and technology, people are eager to gain much more money.The positive personality of those “entrepreneurial hero” has a certain positive energy.But those negative features also are worth reflecting on.