 good afternoon so as you may see may have figured out already there I'm feeling very echo in booming with this mic on there are a number of different experiments which I'm trying to put into play today one of them is this if you don't know what Twitter is or don't have a Twitter account don't bother rally if you do feel free to use it if you don't want to use it no problem I've told Kevin to do a few things oh we don't want that so maybe just Kevin a lonely monologue in the corner if so then so be it also that this lecture is being recorded I need to tell you that for for legal purposes you will not however feature in the recording at all or rather maybe the backs of some of your heads not even that I think I think the idea is it goes goes over you I think there's not much in the way of the announcements except Kevin's reminded me that he put up audio from Rob's lecture on Tuesday the lecture on the Tempest and that should have been made available to you by your various seminar leaders section leaders if not I guess ask them for the for the URL okay Robinson Crusoe my first image doesn't come out it's a very large image I knew there might be a problem with it there we go so it's the image of an island the Juan Fernandez or what used to be called the Juan Fernandez Island now it's called a Robinson Crusoe Island it is located in the Pacific just well actually quite a bit west of Chile it's part of the Chilean territory these days is a little archipelago of a few islands it is the site when it was then called the Juan Fernandez Island it was the site of the series of events or the event that inspired Robinson Crusoe the place where the sailor Alexander Selkirk was set down and forced to survive on his his own account in my last lecture on Columbus I invited you on a journey across uncharted seas unfamiliar territory here however we find ourselves marooned on an island an island that's perhaps a little bit stranger than the first looks full of surprises and strange noises as Caliban said of the island and the tempest be not a fear but the aisle is full of noises just a little digression on on that those of course words were heard in public recently at the opening of the London 2012 Olympics spoken by Kenneth Branagh and actually inscribed on the Olympic Bell the British winner of the Tour de France rang in order to open the Olympics I think it's a little strange that Caliban in this comes to represent the United Kingdom he's the voice the United Kingdom I like it though but it's a little odd anyway here we are in our own in a in our own on our own deserted island we're gonna have to survey the territory hope for rescue perhaps this may be a lonely solitary task ours is the drama of the individual reader okay to give you a sense where we're going a tour of the island all that changed okay I made some revisions to this lecture so we're gonna look at novels definitely and narrative and provenance and progress before provenance and progress we're actually gonna look at boredom and we're not gonna look at materials but you get a general gist we could maybe another day look at materials and some days we might not want to look at boredom but I think boredom is important to understand this novel okay but novels first at last a novel I say at last I don't know about you guys but in my section at least from the very start students have wanted to call the things that we've been reading novels the Odyssey what a great novel play those Republic what a magnificent novel I point out to them this not often there were wrong answers in my section at least but in this instance those are wrong answers this is in fact our first novel the first novel we're reading the first novel we've read on the course but I think what's interesting here is that our idea of literature is shaped by the novel so we can have assumed we project onto other texts that we read other books that we read the name of the novel at very least we want to call in the in the case of the Odyssey an epic poem we want to call it a novel in the case of the Republic a philosophical discourse dialogue what we think of we want to call that a novel it's interesting because the novel is a very modern form literally it's a form that is what an outcome of modernity so what we're seeing here is an instance in which the present our modern present I suppose is influencing ideas ideas of the past there's a form of reverse causality here in which what comes after Robinson Crusoe and other similar novels is shaping our view and our understanding of what's come before the Odyssey is not a novel although it's interesting to see that it's interesting to see I think it's important there's a little book called the philosophy of boredom I totally recommend it to you and there's a philosopher called Heidegger who said it's only when we're bored that we're truly human but we've been calling the novel partly because our experience of the Odyssey we've brought in the Odyssey a novel for instance our experience of the Odyssey was in many ways novel-esque we didn't experience it the way in which it was originally experienced as an epic poem it's oral literature rather than written literature by this day in actual fact this particular experience this particular way of relating to literature is is very modern Robinson Crusoe is usually thought often thought as the first English novel there are you mentioned debates as there are with any sort of sense of what's the first it's usually thought the donkey whole to is probably the first European novel but again that's a product of modernity to remember I told you modernity began on the 12th of October 1492 but modernity began with the interaction between Spain or Spaniards and the New World so this is the first one we've read it's also one of the first novels many people read I mean that reads this in a bridged form usually I mean this has become a classic canonical tale perhaps particularly suitable to for children or for young people or whatever again in a bridged form so it shapes in in biographical ways also I think many people's experience of literature what people think that they should get out of stories I want to underline I mean this is sort of in the way of something like a definition of the novel I suppose I want to underline the extent to which novels are commodities this clicks I think a little bit with some of the things that Kevin was saying about Beowulf Beowulf is not a novel is doing but our experience of it again is novelist is shaped by the by the novel the way in which the Heeneys translation of Beowulf especially was something to be bought was a bestseller very idea of the bestseller only really comes about with with the novel because a novel is a commodity by which I mean just something which is made in order to be sold the Odyssey the earlier epic poetry not made to be sold so but that's a whole lot of other prior conditions or preconditions or technological preconditions in order to make something that's destined to be sold so one of this is written okay it's not it's not it's not oral literature it's not like Beowulf it's not like it's not like the Odyssey for instance it's not drama either it's not it's not made to be performed again our our reading of the Tempest the very partial one right it didn't have that all media and so on it didn't have that vital elements of performance which is the way in which we are supposed what defines drama right the way in which we are supposed to consume and deal draw deal with drama and novels are written and they're written to be read and they're written to be read silently but here's somebody this is I got this off Wikimedia Commons this is some guy on I think Berlin subway this is what this is what we did before we had mp3 players you may not remember this mythical time but you create this sort of cocoon of silence individual thought individual reflection through reading a book and again artistic archetypically prototypically the novel it's very also as a relatively recently recent technology the technology of reading silently of reading to yourself historically historically people didn't repeat a circle of people people read aloud even to themselves or they may have read aloud to others for instance I work instance from Latin American studies in that that's what I know about Cuban tobacco workers for instance would while they were working would have the news extracts from newspapers and essays and so on read aloud to them a bit like I guess the equivalent of moussak or before moussak or something like that or you know European monks and so on so forth so previously reading even even reading was a social activity now with with the novel with the novel as a commodity something which is purchased by the individual for individual consumption it's strange because it's both public and private as I put here it's carving out private space within the public sphere this guy's on a subway in public but for all intents and purposes he is within his own space he's within his own world novels construct their own worlds to talk about a little bit more about that Robinson Fruss has a particularly good example so novels are written to be read written to be printed oh that's that's an important fact that they come novels arise of the era of mass production the printing press they're written to be sold they're written with a market in mind in other words and Robinson Fruss was one of the first bestsellers and continues to be so but the very notion of bestseller again is typical of the novel and that's where when we're talking about Beowulf as a bestseller in some way that's the sign of Beowulf's novelization it's a sign of the fact that we're not reading Beowulf if people actually read it and don't just stick it on their shelves we're not reading Beowulf the way that Kevin wanted to us imagine and imagine us reading it in Stromerville or whatever in Glastonbury we take it home we read it we read on the bus on the subway so a whole nother beyond that sort of technology technological developments that led to or enabled the rise of a novel we also need a whole series of social developments to those beyond the development of another the printing press and so on so forth the technology of reading silently to yourself the rise of the novel required a wholesale or depended upon wholesale series of changes in in society this is a story the rise of the novel this story the the rise of novel typically in in Britain's we're talking about Britain with with Defoe the early 18th century novels associated with Daniel Defoe Henry Fielding Samuel Richardson beyond Robinson Crusoe sort of early pioneers of the former Pamela that's Samuel Richardson and Fielding's Joseph Andrews so Crusoe I mean Defoe is not exactly on his own here and Defoe incidentally is it was an immensely productive writer the very notion that the productivity of the writer is important here because he's writing to sell and also writing to earn money but so concomitantly we're getting the rise of industrialism the rise of the bourgeoisie and therefore the rise of a capitalist market it's tough to talk about the rise of the bourgeoisie incidentally has personally been mentioned the bourgeoisie are always rising the peasants always revolting the bourgeoisie always rising but this is a point of which the early 18th century in which you get a critical mass of literate readers in other words people who have access to technology of silent reading who are able to constitute a market so it's no accident the Europe is the home of the rise of the novel is also the place in which the effects of industrialization are felt first but as I mentioned last time in actual fact the industrial revolution started in the Caribbean but the effects of the industrial revolution are felt first in Europe and it's a matter of the democratization of literature as well so the novel begins and to some extent remains but in a in a attenuated way a lower genre associated with middle class rather than the aristocracy I mean the aristocracy are able to circulate manuscripts for instance which don't necessarily even require printing Machiavelli's instance of that Machiavelli's the prince isn't published until long after its circulation in manuscript amongst the elite of what would become Italy but these are these are texts that are acquired by middle class which has which is newly expanding which has purchasing power to buy things to buy commodities on the market it's also associated with women in particular it's a it's a feminized genre for a number of reasons in different ways it's also I'd say foreign about a community of individuals I mean that's that's essentially what the bourgeois market is I mean if if aristocracy is a series of you know great families they're interlinked through marriage and dynastic arrangements and so on again the kind of things that Machiavelli was talking about the bourgeoisie are individuals in competition with each other and who may not even meet or know each other they construct what a guy called Benedict Anderson I think I mentioned last time too calls an imagined community and they they partly do that through the novels because they're reading the same novels if asynchronously if in their own time and in their own space again I think that's going to be important also when we look at Romans and Crusoe in more detail so here's an image of a novel reader this is a I believe this is 1830s Polish artists painting of the reader of novels you can see that this is a feminized image sensual she's reading in in bed reading in private in bed also I mean this is sort of like a depiction of almost an opium den right you've got the curtain and then someone is sort of providing more stuff right by the side there's a sort of a mysterious hand that is laying out more no more novels to be read addictive but the woman sort of scarcely noticed she's sort of seen is almost wrapped in some kind of ecstasy I think the importance of the mirror there is vital to essentially the novel is a narcissistic genre or to put it a bit more nicely I suppose the novel is a genre in which the bourgeois you recognize themselves again if there's no code for conduct of the sort that Machiavelli is writing for the prince right or the and you're encouraged to go to make your way around it in different ways you know you can start at chapter one because actually you're encouraged to start at chapter 75 and and either follow a particular order which is is suggested for you at the end of the book 75 101 62 or whatever it is or to make your own way around and so on in other words to undo the notion of the directionless directionality of the novel but in general it's only sort of avant-garde experiments like this the train that managed to undo that sense of beginning middle and end novels also have a point of view on a narrator that's important again that's something that the theater doesn't generally have in some ways in in classical theater for instance the we might think or people attempted to think of the of the chorus is providing something of that but novels have to have some kind of a narrator some kind of point of view even if it's a a narrator that does the very best that he or she can to disguise or vanish as a third person omniscient narrator but a third person omniscient narrator is still the narrator the person telling the story roms and crucer we have a first person narrator for instance we've got to be we've got to be careful to mark the difference between the narrator and the author of course the person telling the story and the person writing the book at two different people we've got to distinguish indeed between the narrative which is this story with direction and the book and then finally novels construct and develop us in a world that's something to do with the length of the novel as well we're asked to immerse ourselves in this version of reality which often he specifies a realistic novel this is the case of robinson crucer there's a very close resemblance to the world that we see around us but with important differences okay let's talk more about narrative this is a slide that I showed you before in the Columbus lecture when I was talking I had my long discussion of how we read read three times first the preliminary for a assessment second read for flow pro narrative third reread for detail read selectively and reflectively the stress in talking about Columbus was on first of these with the preliminary for a today the stress will be on the second reading the reading for flow plot and narrative if everything works out very tidally and neatly then my lecture on Borges will be focusing on rereading for detail wouldn't that be lovely and symmetrical okay so I want to talk about the difference between narrative and the image I think it's interesting that robinson crucer has often been reduced to an image often just this image or an image very much like it this is obviously crucer on the island dressed up in his homemade clothes and rags with his guns and so on and so forth we get this sense in the back of the sea we've got the notion of the sort of liminality of the experience the notion he's on the edge where the where the land meets the the sea here and then we've got the footprint and we've got his sort of shock his surprise his amazement at the footprint I want to suggest in some ways this this image comes to stand in for robinson crucer that encounter with the other in a territory that you thought was unexplored the you thought was uninhabited the you thought was virgin the mysterious trace of the other I mean because again it's not exactly the other this is not the indigenous person or the cannibal or the whatever he fears it may be it's the mark that the other is made in territory that you thought you had to yourself I'll say that again because that's not important I like that it's the mark that the other is made in territory that you thought you had to yourself I mean that's a decent image to take from from robinson crucer I think it's important if you don't take anything away else away from from robinson crucer that's that's something good to take away but it is a reduction it seems to me there's a reason why robinson crucer is actually a series of words and an image is not I want to suggest worth a thousand words as you may have been told that's one of the sort of banal and not very helpful cliches images work differently and this is not to say the images are not interesting images are not worthwhile but they work very differently from narrative one you can look at your look at your way around the image in different ways different times you could start with the seagulls on the top left I mean I mean it may be drawing your eye with that the diagonal right from the top left down to the down to the footprint on the right but there are alternative readings there's an alternative ways in which your eye can be make its way around the the image that particularly subject to condensation I'm going to show that in a second with another image density and attempt to pack everything in in the one significant moment again it's understandable why this particular moment which does come from robinson crucer is taken to be a moment of particular significance but if you remember actually after this moment nothing happens for pages and pages and pages nothing happens we'll get to that when I talk about boredom but that's important too reading those pages in which nothing happens is something about the time it takes to read that time that we saw in that sort of character to a picture of the the reader of novels right it's taking her away from everything else or even the guy in the in the subway right it's that temporal immersion in another experience of another world that time seems to be important and that's something that we've lost or we don't generally do with images in actual fact there's a famous survey of actually French museums in 1960s and they they figured out that the average visitor to an art museum spent an average of I think it was six seconds in front of each every painting that they saw those images aren't worth a thousand words or they're not being treated as if they were worth a thousand words again if we're reading a novel we are forced to read the words this is the this is the first title page of the first edition which interested interestingly has an image and the and the text we can talk we can and shouldn't in fact I will talk about both because I'm kind of in church here so it's interesting that the text is in itself a sort of mini narrative right though I mean it's not okay with the version of the book that we have here that for copyright reasons I'm not allowed to put up here but I can wave it around and you can look at it in front of you right it just says Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe the full title of the way in which it's presented on the title page of the first edition the life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York mariner who lived eight and twenty years all alone on an uninhabited island on the coast of America near the mouth of the great river or no co this is also replicated in this book at some point as well having been cast on shore by shipwreck wherein all the men perished but himself with an account of how he at last was strangely delivered by pirates written by himself London so on so forth I mean there's there's a spoiler hey what happened to Robinson Crusoe he got cast on a desert island did it work out all right in the end oh yes he was delivered who delivered him pirates you know that's the whatever is the cliff notes version right right for you there on the front page oh look at the image the image is interesting too it's not tremendously high quality resolution you've got there so we've got Crusoe front and center again dressed up in this garb we got his his two guns his his sword I think they may be a pistol tucked in his belt there so this is then it's the later Crusoe we know this is Crusoe after he's seen the footprint because that's when he tells us that he don't go out without all the all these arms right and yet in the background what you have or what you appear to have is on the left hand side Crusoe divides the image right on the left hand side your mountainous seas and the ship that seems to be the tempest that brings Crusoe to the island in fact there's a sort of symmetry between the left and the right hand side because the seas are literally sort of in this should be this way I guess you know in the shape like the mountain that with the hill that we see on the right hand side the right hand side we see the hill in front of which his his so-called castle his stockade his house is is constructed so you've got a mix of three temporalities here right three temporal moments condensed this is what this is part of what I mean about the possibility of condensation in an image you've got the storm bringing Crusoe to the island you've got the the castle the home that he constructs on the island rendered symmetrically you've got Crusoe himself in his garb post footprint you've also got this sort of reflected up above too because you've got these two clouds on the left you've got the dark cloud the dark cloud the tempest or the hurricane on the right the a white fluffy pretty cloud which is you know the sort of island serenity that he enjoys up until the footprint moment right so this is a this is a this is an image which is trying to sort of do some of the duty of narrative but at the cost of temperate condensation and temporal progression at the cost of portraying us a scene which which doesn't actually come from the book unlike the other scene that we saw with the footprint we can imagine that as a particular scene of particular moment in time of the book this is one that tries to condense a series of moments in the book and is to be read incidentally left to right I'm suggesting okay this is a this is a slide that I showed you in the last lecture too as well about history's narrative I want to suggest that again it's not that novels have some kind of monopoly of narrative and the odyssey's a narrative too in many ways history is a narrative history itself is a branch of literature but but the novel is particularly tied to narrative okay so reading for flow plot narrative what is what is narrative and more attempts to understand what that means one damn thing after another I want to suggest that a narrative is linear and that's another way of saying it has direction as beginning as a middle end last time I spent some time suggesting to you that reading is not linear I also want to suggest to you the writing is not linear sometimes students attempted to think that the process of writing their letters is right writing their essays is linear you start at the beginning when you finally reach 1500 words you stop no you went you went to go back as a writer revise rethink return to your introduction change move paragraphs around and so on writing is not a linear process not if it's done well right reading is not a linear process again as I was suggesting last time not if it's done well but narrative is so it's interesting we've got these two non-linear processes writing and reading but they join together by a process a thing which is in some ways relentlessly linear one damn thing after another that's a quote which is a variously described to people such as Churchill and others to describe history I think it's a very poor description of history as I again mentioned that length of the various possibilities of how we'd understand history last time I mean if anything it's a description of history is a series of events oh didn't mean to do that sorry but even events don't necessarily follow each other events can happen simultaneously there may be no particular connection between events whereas a novel the directionality of the narrative means that one thing has to follow another one damn thing has to follow another and asks us to think about the causality of the relations between these events so you know one of the things that when we're reading for flow plot or narrative is you know what does follow what what happens after what happens before what happens after what happens in between how are events arranged or structured is there a logic does that you know does that logic is the logic of chronology or is it some other logic are there does the narrative try to combine causal chains are there plots and subplots flashbacks and flash forwards flashbacks and flash forwards may make it seem that narrative is nonlinear but again they have to be it has to be presented that's what makes them a flashback or a flash forward they have to be presented in linear form do we see the ways in which the narrative reflects upon its own past or prefigures its own future are there diversions eddies undercurrents how does the structure the way in which the the series of events the one damn thing or another how does it how does it change our understanding of those events how does the fact in which two events which which may be you know in the real world or in the the or the fictional world itself unconnected by the fact that they're rendered approximately one after another in the narrative how does that change our view of those those events or those characters to participate in those events for instance and then as I said before narratives have narrators in a novel it's important to think about the role of the narrator who is he or she what uh his or her character characteristics if he or she seems to be hiding in some way why would he or she be wanting to do that what interests does the narrator have in his or her own narrative again we've seen little bits of that right I mean for instance you know the place that we read tempest for instance has little mini narratives for instance Prospero tells the story at Prospero tells Miranda the story of their joint past but we need to be suspicious about the people telling these stories and then narratives encode time so what's the experience of time what are the points at which time seems to speed up what are the time points at which time seems to slow down in this narrative because the narrative is quite different also from just a list the narrative is actually quite different from a journal as we'll talk about also in a moment okay so Robinson Crusoe's narrative now I think it's significant that despite those images that we see through which we understand Robinson Crusoe Robinson Crusoe and the footprint Robinson Crusoe and the storm Robinson Crusoe's little stockade and so on so forth there's a whole load of things that happen that have nothing to do with this island life on the island occupies pages 37 to 219 of this book it's quite a stretch those we'll see later actually not a lot happens on the island but the bits beforehand the bits after a jam packed of stuff I've just tried to sort of you know summarize briefly what some of that stuff is okay so one to one fifteen there's upbringing advice from the father in particular a trip from Hull to London the first storm right he has to hunker down and off the now where is that is that Essex East Anglia Coast or somewhere of Great Yarmouth and he finally made and he says oh okay my father was right never never got to see this is stupid this is stupid next thing he knows off to sea again off to sea again London to Guinea gets enslaved it's like oh this is all total total mistake right then this whole there's this whole little mini narrative the scape the little slave boy has and blah blah blah I mean there's all this going on in relatively in relatively compressed space narrative space I say 13 pages this story of being captured by pirates in this pirate enclave in North Africa passage to Brazil the new world settlement I mean he becomes a plantation owner right then he goes on another voyage this which he doesn't have to do so this all this it's all surplus it's all excessive for those of us who read Robinson Crusoe or for those of us who believe the promise of the title page and the title image gave us that this is going to be a story about a desert island what's what are these 37 pages doing there's surplus to requirements excessive unnecessary oh yeah finally finally we get to the island page 37 we have the long but in the island we'll talk about it later I'm interested in the frame right this is the narrative frame all these series of narratives little mini narratives little stories packed full of action which frame the main narrative which is the narrative on the island and then surely some of you may not have got there but let me tell you let me do my own little spoiler not only is he rescued but then he has another little adventure he travels around England for a little while he finds out all his family is dead you thought okay stop now stop Robinson you've had enough but he's like no no I'm going to go off to Lisbon goes off to Lisbon sorts out his affairs renders account this is important we'll come back to this renders account of what has been happening to his money while he's been away but there's more little stories he goes across the Pyrenees this is like bizarre set of scenes on a on across the snowy mountains between Spain and France where he does this little party there's him there's Friday who's sort of popped up again been dragged along he doesn't seem to mind missing his father either it seems there's no did you notice that by the way there's no talk about Friday getting on the boat and then suddenly bing Friday's in Lisbon how do you get there presumably they're all along but suddenly he plays a role again he they're they're shooting walls there's a multitude of walls and and then there's this strange story about the bear stop already the books over you had your whole desert island thing but no again there's this excess this surplus and then so he goes to France he goes to Dover goes back to Lisbon again then he goes gets and he's like okay well actually he goes goes to London goes goes back to England he's like okay that's it my traveling days are over I don't want to Lisbon they're all Catholics I don't think I want like being a Catholic and blah blah blah go back to Lisbon and then he's persuaded to go on a on a ship towards the East Indies goes back to his island because I was been happening there and in his absence and ends up in Brazil but you know like surely this book should have finished at page 219 I bet more than one of you were thinking that I was thinking that it's strange but precisely that strange quality these strange excessive moments when I say it's excessive excessive I don't mean we need to cut them off I'm against this abridgement right which is probably the way in which many of you have encountered this story if you've encountered before precisely those strange moments these are the eddies the undercurrents the points of which the story seems to be derailed or going off the off the line in some way or other when I'm reading for flow, plot or narrative that's what I'm looking for and I suggest you should be too okay I'm thinking about it so I'll take the break after a couple of slides more okay so what we're what are we seeing with these excessive moments this is this excessive frame it's like I mean imagine there's a picture if you want okay this is not ornate gilded frame around the narrative of the island in which nothing actually happens a series of repetitions there's a whole other series of travels and shipwrecks and storms which prefigure the storm that takes into the island or make us recollect the storm that take us that took into the island or for instance the travel the travel across land when he says oh you know I don't want to go by land from Lisbon I know I don't want to go by sea I've got this intuition he's got this hunch you can just have this belief in these strange intuitions these strange hunches you've got a strange hunch that something is going to go wrong well we've read the book we know that something always goes wrong whenever Robinson Crusoe takes a trip he's finally figured it out but anyway he's got this strange intuition that betters go by land but the land journey and the land journey is the point in which he says he feels in more danger than he ever did before than he ever did on the island that's the point of which he's most imperiled so it's a repetition it's like but it's different we've got this repeated signs and warnings signs are important in this book I mean in the end again footprint is a sign it's not the thing itself it is not the others the trace of the other it's the sign that someone else has been there although again he's going to question that is this really someone else who is it we'll talk about that more later but the science warning says the father the father says at the beginning okay Robinson you belong to the middle state in life your bourgeois basically what he's saying right you're not an aristocrat you're not proletarian now the upper class you're not the working class you can achieve stuff through sort of toil and hard work and patience but you know don't don't think above or beyond or below your station of course Robinson doesn't listen to his father of course the story would have wouldn't have taken place so it's good that he didn't repeat he travels repeated a slate enslavement so that's another sort of mirroring or doubling and we can think about these doublings as mirrors there are no mirrors in Robinson Crusoe no actual mirrors there's no mirror on the island in fact it's a strange moment to which he sort of stops the narrative to give a description of himself how does he know there's no one there to tell him either what you look like but anyhow so these doublings these repetitions serve as mirrors or repeated enslavement so like he himself is enslaved and then he goes to enslave here there's the shory or sorry I'm not entirely sure how we're supposed to pronounce that and Friday we've got this set of set of repetitions and doublings there that make us think twice about both about about both instances about both occurrences so this excessiveness begins to serve a purpose right this excessiveness comes to be integral because they enable us to it enables us to see or understand what's going on in the main narrative in particular ways repeated tales of progress and then again I think it's important that at the end you've got this final rendering of accounts with extraordinary detail again excessive detail we know you know almost to the penny exactly how much money Robinson Crusoe is owed by whom page 223 I mean we don't need to know this this is completely excessive is it first there was the account current of the produce of my farm or plantation from the year when their father's a balance with my old Portugal captain being for six years the balance appeared to be 1,174 moidores in my favor then blah blah blah the value of the plantation increasing amounted to 38,892 I mean that precision of this account is extraordinary and again in its extraordinary excessiveness extraordinarily fidelity accuracy or supposed accuracy right it's telling us something okay well going to that after the break thank you Kyle okay so so this here Rob who sadly still doing his nest disease likes to remind us that lectures work best likes to remind us that lectures work best when one person speaking normally it's him I think lectures work best when Rob speaking as well okay so this here is the after the title page is the opening of the novel it's the editors the notional editors preface if ever the story of any map private man's adventures in the world were worth making public and were acceptable when published okay there's an awareness here I want to suggest of precisely novel as commodity is a novel that gets published the editor of this account I think the term account is important account meaning on the one hand narrative or story on the other hand it's uh it's accounting right it's about numbers it's about that final tallying up of who I was whom what of debts of wealth the editor of this account thinks it'll be so and whoever thinks because all such things are dispatched to read quickly again the notion of this is this is a novel as a commodity a clock commodities are also consumed that the improvement of it as well as the diversion attempt to say this is not just diverting this is not just entertainment there's a moral purpose to this this is a struggle the novel has right for a hundred or more years to prove that it can improve as well as divert as to the instruction of an instructor the instruction of the reader will be the same but this is another part of these nested narratives so one thing that those especially those early narratives do as well as this series of mirrorings of doublings of repetitions they established the narrator who he is where he comes from the opening line right because this is a this is a focus on an individual an individual who through the course of the narrative is going to be a more individual than anyone else an individual apparently abstracted from society but who reflects the bourgeois suggest that we reflect the reader as an individual reading the novel also abstracted in some way from society albeit on the on the train or in the boudoir or wherever it is but it begins with establishing the the the credentials that he's constructing the world of the narrator i was born in the year 1632 in the city of york of a good family and it's a realist novel like york is a real place 1632 is a date in in relatively recent history or was i mean 70 or so years ago before though not of that country my father being a foreigner bremen who settled first at hull he got a good estate by merchandise establishing the the the class position of the narrator flesh beginning to flesh him out already and leaving off his trade a little afterwards at york from whence he married my mother whose relations are named robinson and so on and so forth so establishing the narrator the narrative voice establishing a certain sense of trustworthiness to in this narrative voice telling us about robinson cruisers middle state again that that's vital establishing this realist but fictional world this world like the world that we ourselves inhabit but at a slight remove and establishing also a world of maritime connections with with england at the heart of it a world of nascent empire in other words a world of trade of the connections not only physical travel but also trade and communication and so on we get less in this in this in this book i would suggest that things are very important materials i'm going to focus on the things the robinson cruisers makes we're told in great detail we're given an itemized inventory of everything he has to start off with and then everything he produces slowly laboriously i mean he can't take anything for granted when he makes a table as he as he tells us at length right it costs him infinite labor getting the tree planing it down and so on and so forth how these things come into being abstracted from the world of nature how he the operations that he has called upon to perform on the world of nature in order to make serviceable utilities it is told at length but there are also a whole series of other things boats letters tobacco slaves the crisscross the world that is being depicted as least established in this in those opening scenes but it's interesting i think this is a narrative that is redoubled we've seen some of those doubles but redoubled also uh in a in a in a different way this there's a what i call i'm using a fancy word i don't use too many fancies word but this is a nice fancy word sticking your s smart as a potential means on a beam at least a couple of times pages two or three two eighteen in which we're told the the robinson cruiser told i forget now who exactly i think i think the first time is the one of them is the captain of the ship i forget who is who is who is telling uh told him my whole story and then i gave them a count of every part of my own story this is the point in which we could imagine the book this account because the book is this account after all of his story beginning all over again nesting within the book as a as a whole there's a borges again as anticipation for next semester hokey louise borges loved the thousand one nights uh and he's particularly fascinated by one particular story which may or may not have existed walk is like to sort of play fast and loose with his bibliographical references and citations but he says there's one particular story which herazade starts to tell the whole story of the thousand one nights all over again this point of which i mean this is a picture of a sort of visual depiction of a maze on a beam it's like when you get all when you get two mirrors right side by side in a lift or elevator sorry and and you you know this endless the one mirror contains the other mirror which contains the other mirror which contains the other mirror and so on and so forth right that there's no end it's an abyss you're thrown into an abyss that's why this fancy french stuff isn't it a maze on a beam you're thrown into abyss and and you're not sure why there's solid ground there's at least two points where there's the potential for this in this story where robinson cruiser tells us that he tells the whole story as part of the story that he's telling us and presumably as part of the story that he's telling the people within the story that he's telling us will also be the fact that he tells the story to us and so on and so forth right that's the maze on a beam which has has which breaks this frame so in other words i told and again we've got the sort of visual representation of this apparently this is something called i'm not a grutz effect i've got no idea what your pd had told me about it uh but this particular this particular version of the maze on a beam it's called a grutz effect here but i like the fact that in this this uh this image literally you see the frame breaking because the frame no longer contains the image that it's purport that it purports to contain so we've had this huge gilded frame right these these narratives is apparently excessive surplus narratives at the beginning and the end but we see the potential of that frame being broken and that we saw going to a rabbit hole that's you know Lewis Cowell's rabbit hole is a bit like that it's a maze on a beam that will never come out of and so this is a this is a form of redoubling that has the potential at least to interrupt to break the story in some ways to break the story and that it it would be all middle there'd be no end we'd never come to a final point we never come to the the frame that encloses it does this actually work i can answer that question yes but there's another point which i think is even more interesting in which we get an interruption to the narrative i began to keep my journal of which i shall give you here the copy it's also a potential maze on a beam and he i'm cruise i was aware of this though in it will be told all these particular over again in other words it's another form of repetition he's told us about the first few days weeks months on the island he's told us it in narrative form and now he's going to tell it again but in the form of his journal and he's aware of the danger the risk here as he interrupts the narrative to tell the same story again by different means in it will be told told all these particulars over again there's a caveat it's like i know something strange is going here it's going on here i know this is sort of wrong i'm breaking the story i'm going back you've heard all this before you might be worried that will never get out of this or robinson's worried that will never he'll never get off the island there's a certain parallelism there right all these structures these narrative structures in which we can get lost in which we can be marooned for which we can wonder if we ever will get rescued as long as lasted for having a wing and then but fortunately material realities intervene the things again the robinson has robinson's has a certain supply of ink but the things are limited the narrative is potentially in these worrying moments unlimited it potentially doubles itself over and over again infinitely fortunately there's a sort of material constraint the amount of ink that he has on his island that means the journal's only gonna last that long so he tells us to the start okay i'm going to tell you this all over again this is worrying the narrative's going off the rails it's going a little haywire we're going to repeat ourselves but don't worry i ran out of ink i was forced to leave it off so we've got this um so we've got the addition the sort of the first frame we've got the the the narrative itself and then we've got this journal this double account that the more or less uh give us again the double account so i think it's important it's like a double entry bookkeeping and that's what enables accountancy that's the revolution that enables bookkeeping is that you add up the numbers of your business twice two ways and then you see do you get the same number both ways something like that is going on here is an accountant writing a narrative but it needs another form of accounting in order to verify that everything adds up at the end so you got this double account but unfortunately the ink runs out material constraints prevents it from going on uh forever but from pages 50 70 79 10 months worth we get things everything over twice this repetition which is also again to sort of touch base for the previous lecture which is also an incorporation of the archive to some extent the journal is presenters is the archive from which the narrative is then constructed again if we think about the at least notional temporality of narration right this is a first person narrator who is writing this account this account of danger and adventure much later on many different times he tells us that the the time of the writing is not contemporaneous with the time of the narrative the time the story is telling he says you'll see further on like for instance when he finds the when he finds the parrot he says something like i find this parrot and it gave a good little story but i'll tell you that later on in its place a sense of where events place in the narrative where events belong in the narrative is often conveyed to us i'll tell you this later it's it's like a hint you know it's like i think it's check off said that uh a gun in the first act must go off in the third it's the same here he's like okay but he's really signaling it to us this question of reading and signs again he's saying look there's a parrot you watch out the parrot's coming back gonna be funny funny not that funny but anyhow he's got to keep us sort of entertained in what is otherwise a very boring book more of that in a moment okay uh so repetition incorporation in the archive and then in the journal the journal is itself interrupted so you got an interruption within interruption pages 62 to 64 pages 70 73 and uh they're interrupted especially the first of these moments is this point at which um he is he's sick he's got a fever in the middle of this fever he has a dream so we get the dream provides another narrative another account in a in a different register i know the register of the register of fan i mean lots of things associated with dreams fantasy but also revelation this is a very important section of the book i want to suggest to you again we see its importance partly because of its place within the narrative or the way in which it's part of this double interruption of the narrative reading for flow plot narrative alerts us to moments of his special significance and special density so we got the dream within the journal within the narrative this point at which he is he is raving he's out of his wits the point which is he's most unlike himself he presents us he presents himself for most of the the journal most of the book after all as this guy who's he's got a series of problems he's trying to figure out how to deal with them that's all there's making a table stuff for instance he's like how can i you know how can i make beer have i got all the stuff to make beer how can i um how can i make a pot it's all these experiments it's like he has to invent we'll talk about this again but he has to invent civilization from scratch it's a thing through it all how do i do this i i wasn't trained as a carpenter i wasn't trained as a potter and so on so forth you know so and he's the he's the i mean that's why he's taken up as a figure within economics is sort of the rational agent the homo economicus the economic man par excellence but this is the point the dream within the journal within the narrative oh which he is least like that he is out of his wits he is raving and this is the point also the time comes unstuck and one of the thing about taking accounts from the very beginning he thinks i don't know how long i'm going to be here i need to have some way of marking time so you've got the this sort of system right i've accounting for the days making notches in the fence i think it is and a longer notch for for sundays for instance that's what the journal is about too right the journal is about accounting for days and accounting for like making sure the days and events correlate this happened on this day he's really interested in anniversaries too like that celebrating or i don't know is it celebrating commiserating marking anyway the anniversary is first of his first arrival at the at the island his first year his second year and so on so forth he's interested in sort of strange almost numerological correspondences that he leaves the island on the same day as he escaped from the pirate enclave in north africa for instance things happen on the same day of the month and the same month of the year so marking time measuring time measuring money is very important measuring time is equally important in fact the two are related because in order to establish profit and loss and for instance to produce those kind of graphs that you all know from cartoons of nothing else right but you need to be able to track the fortune of you know your stocks the fortune of your fortune over time but this is the point in which that measuring goes wrong to this hour i'm part of the opinion that i slept all day and night until almost three that day after for otherwise i knew not how i should lose a day out of my reckoning in the days of the week because it appeared some years after i had done but certainly i lost a day in my account and i never knew which way uncertainty uncertainty even about the basics of how many how many days he's been on on the island i mean there's all sorts of uncertainties faced with on the island right who's there what else is out there is someone else they're beasts so what can i do right all this stuff basically trying to manage uncertainty in some ways that's the that's what he's doing the whole time to use these skills to use what he has observed if not learned in england in europe in this industrializing europe to put them to good use in the in the in the island to recreate society even on his own even as an individual and the one thing he can surely manage best of all is to figure out one day after another but he loses it he loses his account he lost a day in my account at this moment of fever so we see a number of ways in which the narrative threatens to be derailed and questioning what the narrative is doing anyway how can it is it more than a mere sequence of events what does the narrative give you the journal doesn't give you what does and vice versa we're compared these two ways of seeing time of or two ways of accounting for experience of of representing experience is narrative just a sequence of events but what happens when events are scarce when nothing happens on the island there's an anxiety about how to represent this and that anxiety is shown again when when he switches register and when he tells us look i know there's going to be repetition you're gonna you're gonna hear what i've already said once before but don't worry the ink runs out so i think one of the the questions here then it becomes broader okay is this the problem is this a problem of narrative is this a problem of life or is this a problem with this particular life is this a problem of a life which is ruled by measure the measuring of time the measuring of wealth the measuring of the time of work the measuring of days i mean with the rise of the industrial revolution we've got an increasingly measured and regimented life we've got the beginnings at least of a loss of faith in some of the narratives the mythological narratives for instance and even to some extent the religious narratives the previously gave meaning to what we were doing it's a question of can narrative provide meaning to what is otherwise just one damn thing after another in this measured tick tock click clock numbers gain so maybe the problem isn't a narrative the promise of life maybe the novel can present itself as providing some kind of solution in other words there's two ways of understanding the relationship between the novel and industrialization expansion of capitalism trade links and so on one is that it's sort of an outgrowth of that that's what i was suggesting before you get you know the creation of a market you get more and more literate readers and so on and so forth it enables literature to be commodified in this sense it's a sort of synchrony the novel is fully part and parcel of this new world but i want to suggest maybe also the novel is trying to compensate for lax within that world for problems perceived problems with experience within that world maybe that's what's going on here because without meaning life is boring if you're a man of the middle state or a woman of the middle state we no longer believe in heroes and superheroes and so on right then what do you do you go to work each day you know it's like the Beatles song day in the life you know woke up got out of bed drug to come across my head and blah blah blah blah right and over and over again cubicle life dillbert in some ways crusades escaping all that he's he's like a one with nature rousseau would love him in fact rousseau did love him but there's something within cruser which is a little anxious about this that however far he's got away from the world that he left behind it's kind of the same all over again it's just a few quotations in which he goes on about how boring life is on the island i cannot say that after this for five years five years five years are not narrativized any extraordinary thing happened to me that's this massive gap this massive lacuna massive hole in the narrative perhaps it's a good thing the incran out perhaps this could be the incran out because there's nothing more to say i cannot say that after this for five years any extraordinary thing happened to me in this disposition i continued for near a year after this there's another year just sliced off even after i mean i told you after the footprint after the footprint it gets all very excited right the footprint happens i think in year 11 i'll try to keep track of all these things the footprint happens in year 11 he doesn't see anyone he doesn't see anyone he's the possible who has the the feet who could possibly make the footprint for another 10 years he's waiting for the people to come but the visits which they thus make to the island he doesn't even see the signs and not very frequent for about 15 months before any more of them came on shore there again i was hardly tired of it because it was above a year and a half that i waited he's waiting nothing happens except he's like endlessly tinkering and making things but that takes in a phrase that he repeats more than i think any other phrase that takes infinite labor time passes so i've got this strange um tension i don't know this strange contradiction or difference between the frame in which everything is packed in so many things happen in the first 37 pages and in the last 20 pages it's a frantic pace of events and adventures and the bulk in which almost nothing happens you can count on the finger of like one hand a mutilated hand even perhaps the things that happen okay there's a footprint you find the parrot friday comes along but even that doesn't really change things too much you know it's as if the frame compensated for the longer the tedium of what happened in the in what doesn't happen in the middle but then it's also a problem it's a problem to it's therefore it's a problem of representation it's a problem of narrative how do you render a count again of times passage where time happened passes but nothing takes place how to put the experience or rather an experience of of boredom experience of nothingness into words can you do it have we reached a limit of language here a limit of representation a limit of accounting that's the challenge the crew so is facing how to represent nothing but it's something because you have to live through it because it happens and you get up and you tend your goats and you sew your body and you blah blah blah every day all day over and over again that's our experience that's our life you go in you got a class last from nine to ten you got a break you grab a coffee you got a class eleven to twelve thirty and it happens again next week i'm just talking about me in some ways no wonder therefore this is a novel which is so easily reduced to images these flashing moments at which something at least threatens to happening that threatens to happen or something might have just happened we don't quite know again what's the footprint what happened here you know it's got the traces of what would become the detective level here you know print fingerprints another trace another physical imprint right in material in matter so you've got the material there's the sand and you've got this trace what happened here what's going to happen what does it mean that's the image the perfect image in actual fact nothing happens for another 10 or 11 years but you've got the image and it's a nice image that image that I showed at the beginning but then this question of the tension is narrative is warped with the image is narrative failing where the image is nice failing to represent something that the image can i don't know if you know do you guys know what the most uh what the most uh most expensive photograph in the world is the photograph by a german photographer it is a stretch of the Rhine i believe and nothing and and there's you've got a sort of band of green a band of sort well you've got the sky okay so the band of muddy gray a band of green which is the other the other bank a band of muddy gray which is the river and a band of green cost like i'm three million five million i don't know millions and millions of dollars there's nothing there somewhere photography can account for boredom in a much better way than the the narrative can in some in some ways one of my favorite photographers that go from martin pa he's got a he only photographs boredom fantastic absolutely fantastic uh um uh photographer he has an old project there's a place called boring Oregon do you know that so it so he goes this place called boring Oregon and just takes pictures of the boring schoolhouse and boring fiber gate and you know the only sign to say boring this that and the other can images do that or can film do that and that's why andy warholed it andy warholed did a film which is 24 hours long called empire state building in which he just stuck his camera in front of the empire state building and time passed and nothing happened is this again a limit of narrative capacity to um to express the passage of time what does narrative do instead okay it's narratives attempt to provide meaning when otherwise there is none and a narrative to well it's got a complicated relationship with the sign again with the with the with the footprint okay this is the this is the this is the image okay this is the image it happened one day about noon going towards my boat i was exceeding surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the straw which was very plain to be seen in the sand but at this is a point in which he stopped still i stood like one thunder struck as if i had seen an apparition this point where she loses language doesn't know what to say what do you say shock the image can also undo narrative in its own way time passes the image threatens to overwhelm the image of the narrative that image stands in for the whole book but that image also within the book it resonates in his mind for a while he's obsessed with it it's all he can think about the footprint the footprint the footprint it's all conditions everything this this one image the thing he's seen on the on the sand he arms himself he's busy himself like he sort of redoubles his labors right his stockade and his like carving out his little cave and so on so forth but again okay here it is another 12 years nothing happens for 12 years and in those 12 years he's dominated his behavior and his experience is dominated by this one moment by this whatever five minutes 15 minutes half an hour how long was he looking at this footprint but i mean he sort of he says i was happy before the footprint suddenly but his whole affect changes to fear and anxiety and yet nothing happens so how to reconcile what this event discovery of the the footprint with this immense duration this time this 12 years and what happens to marking and giving account of time at that point in the middle of these cogitations apprehensions and reflections and came to my thought one day that all this might be a mere shimmer of my own and this foot might be the print of my own foot when i came on shore from my boat this cheered me up a little too and i began to persuade myself it was all a delusion wouldn't be better if actually nothing happened at all there wasn't even the footprint we didn't have the image if it was just the delusion and illusion if this was another example of that fever that i suggested was so important that interrupted that interrupted the journal is it a mere shimmer of my own i did it there's no other this is not the trace of the other in this land that i thought was all my own in fact it is all my own in fact i've even marked it without knowing that i did so myself for me i mean that's what he's saying i was here before me talk about a founding narrative that's better than you know you arrive your columbus or whatever or your your prospero and you discover signs that you've already been here before suddenly you're legitimate that's the great basis to be the ruler of the island but there's an intense ambivalence here then in some ways if there's nothing out there there's no danger but on the other hand it's the other that finally gives meaning to what is otherwise meaningless existence because if there's nothing out there and nothing happens then it means nothing the footprint gives this novel meaning it gives his next 12 years of inactivity meaning he's waiting for something to happen okay i want to just throw a couple of narratives that there are a couple of overarching novel narratives that the default uses to try and compensate for other the fact that otherwise nothing happens these are very very slow gradual narratives okay this is from the dream sequence this is from the fever dream sequence that interrupts the journal the interrupts the narrative in the interval is the operation i took up the bible and began to read this is the point when okay so it's interrupting robinson crucer as writer he becomes reader the reading interrupts the writing in the interval this operation i took up the bible and began to read he's causing self he comes into two ways through tobacco i like that and through the bible but there's a certain amount of tension as well between the tobacco and the and the bible but still the two together seem to work out well my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear reading at least that time only having opened the book casually the first words that occurred to me with these he's not a linear reading but reader by the way we know is that doesn't begin the beginning he doesn't begin a genesis where we began he opens up the book and sees what happens he allows fate or providence is the term that is used here he allows fate to speak to him for providence to speak to him uh the first words that occurred to me well these call on me in the day of trouble and i will deliver and now shall glorify me is that promise of meaning through reading okay so this is the narrative of conversion the point at which crucer becomes a reader as well as a writer we're going to see series of firsts in some ways the book begins here at this the fevered dream sequence within the journal within the narrative because it's where he begins to do a whole series of things they never done before he begins to read he begins to pray he begins to repent he reflects back on what he's been but he begins he thinks to understand the way in which nature works the nature is the working out of god's providence he becomes a christian his life becomes a life redeemed this is the instruction that we've been promised about the it's not just diversion we've got instruction and edification through the novel yes moral and spiritual reflection instruction and then that's partly what friday exists for as well friday exists so the crucible can pass on the gift of conversion my question is friday fully converted that strange trick he does with the bear there's still something excessive and strange and wrong about friday he tells them you'll laugh at this you'll laugh at this and they're not laughing they're like the bear you're bringing the bear here you're bringing the bear here they you know like gets the bear of the tree and starts jumping up and down in the branches as you laugh now you laugh now and they do laugh i want to suggest they're laughing because they're sort of nervous you know is that nervous uneasy laughter when you don't exactly know what to say or what to do when something is different or odd or uncanny in some way or another something unfamiliar and troubling and excessive still but still friday exists notionally to be converted because robinson himself experiences through fever through dream that's where the dream becomes not just a place of fantasy but also a place of revelation for for crucible it's a place of the revelation of the providence of god it is god that has made it all well but then it came unstrangely if god has made all these things he guides and governs them all and all things that concern him for the power that can make all things must certainly have the power to guide and direct them i was brought to this miserable circumstances by his direction he having this old power there's a plot there's a narrative there's a logic there's a meaning of work here i mean it's it's like god as author god as narrator god gives direction to this narrative which is in danger repeatedly of getting hopelessly lost either through these redoublings and repetitions or mes and unbeam or through the fact of trying to convey an experience of tedium and repetition in which nothing happens or when it's shocked by the image all these different ways in which the narrative threatens to get undone then god comes down into the book through the book through the bible and and and offers direction direction meaning both governance builds in church but also movement implotment i'm here for a reason i was directed here double sense of direction goddess director we can think of as a stage director as well right as a movie director or something moving the story along god working through nature via providence and then the the purpose therefore of ronalds and cruzos narrative and ronalds and cruzos narrative is now given meaning it's not merely accounting for time it's not merely trying to convey the daily experience the daily tedium of a world in which everything remains the same and nothing happened you get up for class you go to class you go on you write a message you get up for class you go on so on so forth or the equivalent in the early 18th century but it explains that there is meaning to all this repetition there is meaning and purpose to all these apparently trivial things so the narrative of robinson cruzos is a narrative of testimony if you like replaying and explaining providence to the reader that's one narrative well that's one possibility of how to redeem the narrative which is faced with so many problems in this book there's a second one which is progress it's another narrative of direction this is as i was suggesting the myth of homo economicus the myth of robinson cruzos the economic man the man who builds society through patience and hard labor he comes with nothing or well sort of he's actually got a lot of advantages he's got a lot of tools and stuff but he's on his own and he has to use the relatively limited number of tools that he has to rebuild society he keeps on complaining he doesn't have society i mean he doesn't in the sense that there aren't any other people but in other ways he does he is society he incarnates society he incarnates a myth of social progress from a social development we call it now right we've got developed countries and developing countries in which importantly he does all the work so it's a myth of development that didn't require empire didn't require conquest of the americas and american silver and african slavery and so on and so forth cruzos is the ideal bourgeois hard-working man he's the working poor that's the notion that's what they say in america when they in which through his own patience and thrift and and calculation and rationality and hard labor he improves himself and no one gets exploited isn't capitalism nice takes a while takes a while but this this this idenic almost literally idenic vision of capitalism in this desert island and the wilds in nature whereby one man who stands in for one class on their own pulls themselves up pulls himself up through his boot bootstraps and his hard work and his patience and that's why it has to take so long because all good things come to those who wait and labor if they are good thinking bourgeois englishmen it's a nice little narrative isn't it amongst other people calm marks for those rubbish but still it's what we've been given here that we're going to get an increasing wealth of things okay this is part of the importance of things i was saying things are absolutely important in this book the things that crisscross the world the ink the material the material constraints to the narrative in the case of the ink the sand which in which receives the impression of the footprint for instance um the the way in which nature provides all these raw materials for for for crucible the wood and so on which enable continuous technological development which enable house and seeds and transport even as an umbrella goats but then people and and living animals become things too to enable the further accumulation of more things goats parrots people and they're things that have to be possessed and are possessed land as possession i mean that's why i mean roberton doesn't think twice when friday comes along of you know where friday fits in within this social lord i mean he calls his whole family but he's also a thing land as possession people as possession for the further increase of things for further wealth of things here he is in his little little workshop or i don't think he's having dinner there with his little family his parrots and so on since it's a delict version of the industrial civilization that uh uh uh this this civilization of them of commodities immense welfare commodities the the thousands of copies of robinson crucible defaults robinson crucible getting printed and bought and circulated that's again a problem though when he realized how many things he has it is impossible to express here the fluttering of my very heart this is when he's in lisbon at the end when i looked over these letters and especially when i found all my wealth about me in a word i turned pale and grew sick and had not the old man this is the guy who's been looking after his business run and fetched me a cordial tobacco's good and alcohol's better i believe that the southern surprise of joy had over set nature and i had died upon the spot it's interesting the two points at which he's closest to death are both back in europe one with the excess of joy when he discovers i'm rich rich by doing nothing incidentally like all this has been happening the plantation has been thriving without him and two went faced with the multitude of walls in the Pyrenees crucible is never in more danger than he is in uh in in europe so here is this excess of things the weight of things themselves threaten to kill him fortunately is another thing cordial the rescues him with the passage of time wealth increases through labor through infinite labor but also through wise investment essentially that's what crucible is done he's invested wisely in plantation the slave plantation in brazil he comes back everything's increased it requires however meticulous accounting that's what happens at the end to figure out who owes what who deserves what who is owed what but as i say wealth is also wealth the sheer weight of things the sheer accumulation of things so shocking and unnatural threatens to overturn nature the southern surprise of joy it over set nature but the the accumulation also oversets nature and and and threatens paralysis is this the shock of industrialization oh yeah i figure i should say something about monsters i was gonna just show you this i sort of leave it at that i don't know if you can again the resolutions are not fantastic as a screenshot from the 1913 film version of uh romsson crucible you have crucible in there sort of in the garb i don't know whatever it's better and i know i'm not bare but but goat and so on and so forth and you have uh you know friday who doesn't look native very native american looks rather african-american uh kissing his feet i want to go back to the question of the shimmerer because the shimmerer when he uses it this is the word he uses to describe the foot footprint when he's thinking what is it perhaps his mind perhaps there's nothing perhaps it's a mere shimmerer but a shimmerer is itself a monster here's a shimmerer so the very point that he says the footprint maybe nothing maybe just a delusion is the point at which he says here be monsters the footprint itself is monstrous okay but there's there's other possibilities for for monsters crucible himself he adopts indian ways he's got islamic moustache which i feel i'm trying to channel a little bit here i don't know what a turkish he calls it right the turkish moustache and he takes on the ways of the savages if necessary meanwhile friday proves himself pretty naturally skilled like you know he's he's the he's the most amazing quick learner on everything there's something about friday who is otherwise i guess the most obvious monster here but you know somehow he's never quite described in suitably monstrous terms as the cannibals but again crucible like he's a little ambivalent about the cannibals he wants to go off and like he's he's horrified there's always horror the horror the horror uh but at the same time it's you know they've got reasons of their own what who am i to intervene this is sort of cultural relatives of them that strangely comes in here you've also got the pirates and the and the rogues at the end are they monsters is it capitalism itself that is that is monstrous but again i like to think of the the footprint and notice again i think i mentioned before there are no mirrors here the closest we get to a mirror is the footprint if the footprint is crucious which is the possibility the doubts the monstrous thought that's me that's the point which we get to coin a phrase the monster in the mirror okay uh very briefly i've got two minutes this will do is uh to talk about habit i think in the end this is a book about habit i went on with my husband very digging planting fencing as you don't that's what repetition is habit is habit is something you do whether you like it or not over and over again you go out you know you have another cigarette you do uh you know you you have a you you have the same meal times you all the same thing from mcdonald's you all those things you know these are all habits right i went on with my husband's really digging planting fencing as usual i gathered and cured my grapes and did everything necessary as before i mean this is what he's this is what he's doing on the island he's becoming habituated it's something about the body and the repetition to the body these things you do instinctively without thinking of them but not instinctively in the sense that they're from nature they're habits that you have to learn you have to learn a habit they're also social they're about the the body they're about tiredness and waiting even despair that the attitudes of the body so we have all these it's not only the narrative that repeats the body repeats it makes the same gestures over and over again crucials infinite labor which is more habituation more habits marks out time a narrative that's written on the body but also had it that threatens to undo narrative in the end i want to say this book is about two things how to give voice to the body how to construct meaning from reputation from repetition okay