Abstract
Of the origins of the novel we may say not that in the beginning was the word but that in the beginning was the interpretation of the word. The novel is rooted in exegesis. The dreaming narrator of The Pilgrim’s Progress offers a series of adventures for us to interpret. The pleasure will not be in the adventures so much as in the interpretation. But not only do we, the readers, interpret his dream; “the man clothed with rags” with whom the dream begins is himself an interpreter. We see Christian in the opening sentences with a book in his hand. “I looked and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled.” His journey is in essence a quest for the meaning of the words in the book. His wrong turns are essentially misreadings, his victories essentially sound readings indicated by suitable prooftexts in the margins. His escape from Doubting Castle is by means of the Key of Promise — a promise to be found in the same book wherein he read of the imminent destruction of his city.
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Notes
Genesis Rabbah, I, 1. See Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, vol.I, trans. H. Freedman (London: Soncino, 1939), p.1
Cf. J. Hillis Miller, with special reference to the novel: “Whenever the interpreter thinks he has reached back to something original, behind which it is impossible to go, he finds himself face to face with something which is already an interpretation.” “The Interpretation of Lord Jim,” in The Interpretation of Narrative: Theory and Practice, ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p.213
Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Décaméron (Den Haag: Mouton, 1969), p.12
Cf. Susan A. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), pp.76–82, on the metonymic mode in rabbinic thought
Roman Jakobson, Fundamentals of Language, 2nd rev. edn. (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p.94
Cf. G.A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Biography (New York: Goddian Press, 1971), pp.81–4, 97;
see also Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel 1600–1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp.317–19
Cf. J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), pp.89–90;
see also Edwin B. Benjamin, “Symbolic Elements in Robinson Crusoe,” PQ 30 (1951), 206–11. I take issue, however, with the overly typological emphasis of both Hunter and Benjamin.
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe &c., ed. Michael Shinagel (New York: Norton, 1975), p.14. Subsequent citations are from this edition; page numbers are given in parentheses in the text.
On this polarity, cf. George W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness (Nashville TN: Abingdon Press, 1968), p.16 and passim
This term for the interpreter within the text is usefully proposed by Naomi Schor in “Fiction as Interpretation,” in The Reader in the Text, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p.168
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp.138–9
Cf. G.A. Starr (though without particular reference to Robinson Crusoe) in Defoe and Casuistry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); and cf. McKeon, op. cit., p.321
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© 1998 Harold Fisch
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Fisch, H. (1998). Robinson’s Biblical Island. In: New Stories for Old. Cross-Currents in Religion and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502352_2
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