 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 about it 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 We don't want that So maybe just Kevin a lonely monologue in the corner If so then Soviet 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 other maybe the backs of some of your heads Not even that I think I think the idea is it 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 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 There's 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 none afraid But the aisle is full of noises Just a little digression 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 load. 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 made me 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. Oh 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 does Republic what a magnificent novel I point out to them There's 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 It's that our idea of literature is shaped by the novel so we can have assume we project on to 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 of 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, sir. It's a form That is what an outcome of modernity So what we're seeing here is an instance in which the 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 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 part because our experience of the Odyssey we put in the Odyssey a novel for instance our experience of the Odyssey was in many ways novelesque We didn't experience it the way in which it was originally experienced as an epic poem as 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 Classic canonical tale perhaps Particularly suitable to it 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 and 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 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 Incidentally, but our experience of it again is novel-esque is shaped by the novel the way in which the Heeneys translation of Beowulf Especially it was something to be bought was a bestseller very idea of the bestseller Only really comes about with with the novel because the novel is a commodity by which I mean just something Which is made in order to be sold the Odyssey the Iliad 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 this is 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 break partial one, right? It didn't have that Or Medea and so on it didn't have that vital element of performance, which is the way in which we support 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 something this is I got this off Wikimedia Commons. This is some guy on I think a 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 after to keep archetypically prototypically The novel it's very also as a relatively recently recent technology though The technology of reading silently of reading to yourself Historically Historically people didn't a circle people people read aloud Even to themselves or they may have read aloud to others For instance, I don't 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 and 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 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 Nobles construct their own worlds to talk about a little bit more about that Robinson true size of sickly good example So novels are written 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 cruises one of the first best sellers and Continues to be so but the very notion of best seller again is Typical of the novel and and that's where when we're talking about Beowulf as a best seller 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 or read on the 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 always 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 that Rise of the novel this story the the rise of novel particularly in in Britain's we're talking about Britain with with default 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 default is not exactly on his own here and and default instantly 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 That's how concomitantly concomitantly. We're getting the rise of industrialism the rise of the bourgeoisie And and therefore the rise of a capitalist market It's tough to talk about the rise of the bourgeoisie incidentally is Firstly 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 the 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 an 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 an instance of that Machiavelli's The Prince isn't published until long after It's 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 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 constructs what a guy called Benedict Anderson. I think I mentioned last time too Calls an imagine community and they put 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 gonna be important. Also when we look at Romance and Crucifal 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 It's sort of providing more Stuff Right outside. There's a sort of mysterious hand that is laying out more no more novels to be read Addictive but the woman sort of scarcely noted She's sort of seen as 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 bourgeoisie recognize themselves Again, if there's no code for conduct of the sort the Machiavelli is writing for the prince, right? 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 I the 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 direction Directionality of the novel but in general it's only sort of avant-garde experiments like this We're trying that they 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 Classical theater, for instance, we might think people attempted to think of the Of the chorus is providing something like that but novels have to have some kind of narrator some kind of point of view even if it's a narrator that does the very best that he or she can to Disguise or vanish a third person omniscient narrator, but a third person omniscient narrator is still the narrator The person telling the story From some cruiser 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 in 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 Invelop 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 is specific to realistic novel. This is in the case of Robinson Crusoe 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 product narrative third reread for detail read selectively and the stress in talking about Columbus was on the 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 tidily 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 Crusoe is often been reduced To an image often just this image or an image very much like it This is obviously Crusoe on the island Dressed up in his homemade Clothes and rags of his guns and so on so forth We get the sense in the back of the sea what are the notion of the sort of liminality of the experience the notion these on the edge Whether 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 just in some ways This this image comes to stand in for Robinson Crusoe that encounter with the other in a territory that you thought was Unexplored you thought was uninhabited you thought was virgin The mysterious Trace of the other 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 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 Crusoe. I think it's important If you don't take anything else away from from Robinson Crusoe, that's that's something good to Take away, but it is a reduction. It seems to me There's a reason why Robinson Crusoe 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 those sort of banal and not very helpful cliches Images work differently in it and this is not to say the images are not interesting and just no worthwhile But they work very differently from narrative one you can look at your look your way around the image in Different ways at 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 Crusoe 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 reach 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 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? Just as Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe the full title Or 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 Orinoco this is also replicated in this book at some point as well Having been cast on shore by shipwreck wherein all the men perish 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 It'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 is the later Crusoe. We know this is crucial 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 a 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 the seas are literally sort of in in this 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 by the possibility condensed 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 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 there are white fluffy pretty cloud which is you know the sort of island serenity that he enjoys up until 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 is narrative I want to suggest that again It's not that novels Have some kind of monopoly of narrative and the Odyssey is a narrative too in many ways History is a narrative history itself is a branch of literature, 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 at the beginning as a middle and 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 know you want 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 joined 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 very poor description of history 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 But even events don't necessarily follow each other Events can happen simultaneously. There may be no particular connection between events Whereas in 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 narratives, 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 or their plots and subplots? Flashbacks and flash forwards Flashbacks and flash forwards may make it seem that narrative is non-linear, 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 they diversions? Eddie's undercurrents How does that structure the way in which 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 I know in the real world or in the or the fictional world itself Unconnected by the fact that they're rendered Proximately one after another in the narrative How does that change our view of those those events or those characters that have participated in those events for instance And then as I said before narratives of narrators In a novel it's important to think about the role of the narrator Who is he or she? What 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 of Prospero tells Miranda the story of their joint past But we need to be suspicious about the people telling these stories and then narratives in cold times 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 a Narrative is actually quite different from a journal as well 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 Though as 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 115 this 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 s6 East Anglia Coast or somewhere of great Yarmouth? And he finally made and he says so okay, my father was right never never go to see this was stupid This is stupid next thing you know off to see again London's a guinea Gets enslaved. He's like this is all terrible told mistake, right? Then this whole there's this whole little mini narrative the escape little slave boy he has and blah blah I mean there's all this going on in relative in relatively compressed Space narrative space I said 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 becomes a plantation owner Then he goes on another voyage this which he doesn't have to do So this all this is all surplus. It's all excessive But those of us who read Robinson Crusoe or For those of us who believe the promise of the title page and the tile image Gave us that this was gonna be a story about a desert island What sort what are these 37 pages doing? That'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 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 gonna 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. That's just 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 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'd he get there? He needs to be there all along, but suddenly he plays a role again he they're they're shooting wolves and the multitude of wolves 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 I got to France because the Dover goes back to Lisbon again And he goes gets and he's like, okay, well, 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 go 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 are thinking that I Was thinking that It's strange, but precisely that strange quality these strange excessive moments When I say it's accepted excessive. I don't mean we need to cut them off I'm against this abridgment 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 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. I'm thinking about it. So I'll take the break after a couple of slides more. Okay, so What we see what what are we seeing with these excessive moments? This is this excessive frame. It's like I mean imagine that there's a picture if you want Okay, there's no ornate gilded frame around the narrative of the island in which nothing actually happens a Series of repetitions as 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 But 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't have this belief in these strange secret intuitions these strange hunches You've got a strange hunch that something is gonna 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 Then 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 got this repeated signs of 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 gonna 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. You're bourgeois. What basically what he's saying Right, you know an aristocrat. You're not proletarian Of the upper class, you know 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, I'm saying doesn't listen to his father. Of course the story wouldn't wouldn't have taken place. So it's good that he didn't Repeated travels repeated a slave enslavements. That's a little mirroring or doubling and we can think about these doublings as mirrors There are no mirrors in roms and cruiser No actual mirrors. There's no mirror on the island But 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 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 is 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 much how much money Robinson Crusoe is owed by whom? Page two two three. 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 1174 more dollars in my favor Then blah blah blah the value of the plantation increasing amounted to three thirty eight thousand eight hundred ninety two I'm not precision of this account It's extraordinary and again in its extraordinarily excessive nuts extraordinarily Fidelity accuracy or well supposed accuracy, right? It's telling us something Okay, I'm 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 Legs to remind us the lectures work best when one person speaking normally. It's him. I think lectures works 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 we're acceptable when published And there's an awareness here I want to suggest of precisely the novel as commodities 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 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 edge of this account things will be so and whoever thinks because all such thing are dispatched to read quickly Again, the notion of this is this is a novel as a commodity a clock commodities are also consumed But 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 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 So the instruction of an instructor's 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 reflects 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 credentials the He's constructing the world of the narrator I was born in 60 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 relative the recent history or was I mean 70 or so years ago before Though not of that country my father being a foreigner of Bremen Who settled first at Hull you got a good estate by merchandise establishing 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'd 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 Crusoe's middle state Then that that's vital establishing this realist but fictional world This world like the world that we ourselves in have it, but a slight remove And establishing also a world of maritime connections With England At the heart of it a world of nascent Empire, you know the world 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 gonna focus on the things the roms and crusade 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 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 Is told at length, but there are also a whole series of other things boats letters tobacco slaves the criss-cross 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 In a different way this there's a What I call I'm using a fancy word. I don't use too many fancy word, but this is a nice fancy word stick in your answer Smart as a potential me's on a beam at least a couple of times pages two or three to 18 in which we're told the the Robinson Crusoe 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 he's telling 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 can 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 whole. There's a Borges Again as anticipation for next semester, Jorge Luis Borges loved the thousand and one nights And he's particularly fascinated by one particular story Which may or may not have existed Borges like to sort of play fast and loose with his bibliographical references and citations But he says there's one particular story at which her as I'd starts to tell the whole story of the thousand and one nights all over again This point of which I mean this is a picture of a sort of visual depiction of a me's on a beam It's like when you get all when you get two mirrors right side by side and a lift or elevator sorry and and you Yeah, this endless The one mirror contains the other mirror which contains the other mirror which contains the other mirror and so on 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 a me's 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 Kruster tells us they 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 me's on a beam which has has which breaks this frame So in other words, I told again we've got the sort of visual representation of this apparently This is something called I'm not a roots effect. I've got no idea. What could Peter told me about it? But this particular this particular version of the me's on a beam But I like the fact that in this this 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 rabbit hole Lewis Cowell's rabbit hole is a bit like that. It's a me's 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 in 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 is also a potential me's on a beam and he and Cruz I was aware of this Though in it will be told all these particular over again. It was 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 tall told all these particulars over again. It's a caveat It's like I know something strange is going here 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 won't never get out of this Well, Robinson's worried that will never he'll never get off the island. There's a certain parallelism now, 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 journals only gonna last that long so he tells us to the start Okay, I'm gonna tell you this all over again This is worrying The narrative is going off the rails. It's going little haywire. We're gonna repeat ourselves, but don't worry. I ran out of ink. I Was forced to leave it off, so we've got this So we've got the addition Sort of the first frame. We've got the the narrative itself and then we've got this journal It's double account that the more or less it Give us again the double accounts. I think it's important. It's like a double-entry bookkeeping and that's what enables a countancy 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. This 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 prevent it from going on Forever 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 Or 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 like a hint, you know It's like I think it's check-off said that 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 Not that funny, but anyhow, he's got to keep us sort of entertained in what is otherwise a very boring book More about in a moment. Okay So repetition incorporation in the archives and then in the journal you the journal is itself interrupted So you got an interruption with an interruption Pages 62 to 64 pages 70 73 and They're interrupted especially the first of these these moments is this point at which He is he's sick. He's got a fever In the middle of this fever. He has a dream So we get that the dream provides another narrative another account 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 of which is he's most unlike himself He presents us. He presents himself for most of 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 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 wasn't trained as a carpenter I wasn't trained as a potter and so on so forth, you know, so 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's 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 gonna be here I need to have some way of marking time So you've got these 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 Sundays, for instance, that's what the journals about too, right? The journal is about accounting for days and accounting for like making sure 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's 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 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 or nothing else, right? But you need to go 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 or their beasts are there? 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 learnt 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 an 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 is it and vice versa? What we compared these two ways of seeing time of Or two ways of accounting for experience of representing experience is Narrative just a sequence of events. Well, 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 gonna be repetition You're gonna you're gonna hear what I've already said once before But don't worry the ingrowns out. So I think one of the questions here then it becomes broader Okay, is this the pro is this a problem of narrative? Is this a problem with life or is this a problem with this particular life? Is this a problem with 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 game So maybe the problem is in the 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're the creation of a market you get more and more literate readers and so on so forth It enables literature to be commodified in this sense as 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 Dilbert in some ways Crusoe is escaping all that He's he's like a one with nature Russo would love him if I grew so did love him But there's something within Crusoe which is a Little anxious about this but 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 ink ran out. Perhaps this could be the ink ran 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. That'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? And the footprint happens. I think in year 11. I'll try to keep track of all these things The footprint happens a year 11. He doesn't see anyone. He doesn't see anyone. It's the possible Where's the the feet who could possibly make the footprint for another 10 years? He's waiting for the people to come but the visits look 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 than 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 is he 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 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 by 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 happens 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 narrative. How do you render account 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? 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 when you saw your body in your blah 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 That's from 9 to 10 you got a break you grab a coffee you got a class 11 to 12 30 and it happens again next week. I'm just talking about me If someone is 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? Yeah, it's got got 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 that'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. It's a perfect image in actual fact nothing happens For another 10 11 years You've got the image and it's a nice image that image that I showed at the beginning But then this question of attention is narrative is warb 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? what the most most expensive photograph in the world is The photograph by a German photographer. It is a stretch of the Rhine, I believe and And nothing and there's it'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 I don't know millions and millions of dollars There's nothing there Some way photography can account for boredom in a much better way than the Narrative can in some ways one of my favorite photographers a guy from Martin Park. He's got a he only photographs boredom fantastic absolutely fantastic Photographer has an old project. There's a place called boring Oregon. Do you know that? So it goes this place called boring Oregon I just take pictures of the boring schoolhouse and boring fiber gate and they're only sign to say boring this that the other Can images do that or can film do that and that's what Andy Warhol did Andy Warhol did a film which is 24 hours long called Empire State Building 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? To express the passage of time What does narrative do instead? Okay, it's a narrative is an 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 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 shore which is very plain to be seen in the sand But at this is a point in which he stopped still I Stood like one thunderstruck as if I had seen an apparition This point which he 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 just also within the book it resonates in his mind For a while he's obsessed of 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 sort of busies himself like he sort of redoubles his labors, right his stockade and it's like Carving out his little cave and so on and so forth But again, okay here it is another 12 years Nothing happens for 12 years and in those 12 years He's dominated is it 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 do we reconcile what this event? Discovery of 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 Abductions and reflections and came to my thought one day That all this might be a mere shimmer of my own 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 a delusion and illusion if this was another example of that fever But I suggest it 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 Better than anything, 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 they're a couple of over over arching novel narratives 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 and interrupts the journal the interrupts the narrative In the interval is the operation. I took up the Bible and began to read this the point when okay So it's interrupting Robinson Crusoe 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 cures himself because it's of 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 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 will occur to me with these. He's not a linear reading but a reader by the way We know as they doesn't begin the beginning. He doesn't beginning of Genesis where we began Opens up the book and sees what happens. He allows fate or providence. It's the term that is used here He allows fate to speak to him for providence to speak to him The first words that occurs to me with these call on me in the day of trouble And I will deliver and now shout glorify me There's that promise of meaning through reading Okay, so this is the narrative of conversion The point of which Crusoe becomes a reader as well as a writer We're going to see if the first 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've 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 other. It's not just diversion We've got instruction and edification through the novel. Yes moral and spiritual reflection and instruction And then that's partly what friday exists for as well Friday exists so the crusoe can pass on the gift of conversion. Okay, my question is friday fully converted That's strange trick he does with the bear. There's still something excessive and strange and wrong about friday He tells them You laugh at this you laugh at this and they're not laughing They're like you bring the bear here you bring the bear here you bring the bear here Then he you know like gets the bear of the tree and starts jumping up and down in the branch He says you laugh now you laugh now and they do laugh But 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 a crusoe. 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 the soul power There's a plot. There's a narrative. There's a logic. There's a meaning of work here I mean, 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 mise-en-dame 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 offers direction Direction meaning both governance gods in church, but also movement Implotment I'm here for a reason I was directed here double sense of direction God is directed. We can think of it 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 purpose therefore of ronalds and crucios narrative and ronalds and crucios 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 so on and 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 ronalds and crucios 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 ronalds and crucios 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 the 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 it keeps on 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 For 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 crucios is the ideal bourgeois Hard-working man. He's the working poor. That's the notion that's what they say in america only 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 edenek Almost literally edenek 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 Karl Marx thought he was rubbish But still it's what we've been given here That we're gonna 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 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 seas and transport even as an umbrella Goats but then people 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 Robinson doesn't think twice when Friday comes along Of you know where Friday fits in within this social order. 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 for these little families parrots and so on So there's a delict version of the industrial civilization that Of this this civilization of them of commodities immense wealth of commodities the thousands of Copies of Robinson Crusoe defaults Robinson Crusoe with the game 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 a multitude of walls in the Pyrenees Crusoe is never in more danger than he is in In Europe. So here is this excess of things the weight of things themselves threatened 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 Crusoe has 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 a sheer weight of things that's 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 over sets nature and And threatens paralysis Is this the shock of industrialization? Okay, I figured I should say something about monsters I was gonna just show you this And sort of leave it at that I don't know if you can again the resolutions are not fantastic There's a screenshot from the 1913 film version of uh, Robinson Crusoe You have Crusoe in there sort of in the garb. I don't know whatever is better And I know not bear but the goat and so on and so forth And you have uh, you know Friday Who doesn't look native a very native american looks rather African-american Kissing his feet I want to go back to the question of the shimmerer Because the shimmer when he uses it This is the word he uses to describe the footprint when he's thinking what is it perhaps his mind perhaps is nothing Perhaps it's a mere shimmer but a shimmerer is itself a monster Here's a shimmer So the very point that he says the footprint may be nothing maybe just a delusion Is the point of which he says Here be monsters The footprint itself is monstrous Okay, but there's there's other possibilities for for monsters Crusoe 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 Uh, I mean 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 crusoe 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 Who am I to intervene this is sort of cultural relativism 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 Crusoe's which is the possibility the doubts the monstrous thought That's me That's the point which we get to point 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 mean, I think in the end this is a book about habit I went on with my husbandry digging planting fencing as you and that's what repetition 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 and you do Uh, you know, you you have a you you have the same mealtimes you all the same thing from mcdonald's you all those things You know, they did all habits, right? I went on with my husbandry digging fencing fencing as usual I gathered and cured my graves 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 Their 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 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 Crucals infinite labor which is more habituation more habits Marks out time and narrative that's written on the body but also have 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