The Complete “English Husbandman”: Robinson Crusoe’s Husbandry and the Colonial Georgic
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This essay investigates Robinson Crusoe’s engagement with the physical environment of the island. In line with an array of recent critical examinations of the eighteenth-century georgic revival and the renewed interest in the agency of nonhuman agents, to date, I argue that Crusoe’s relationship with the landscape in the island resonates with eighteenth-century British understandings of nature and the ideals of colonial expansionism. The ways in which Crusoe keeps track of the weather, climate, and seasonal changes in order to understand the pattern of nature and thus improve his cultivation epitomize Crusoe’s subjectivity as a quintessential “English husbandman.” Although Defoe is better known as an author of The Complete English Tradesman (1728)—a kind of conduct manual for aspiring middle rank English tradesman—than his abiding interest in cultivation and husbandry, Crusoe’s empirical observations of things within the island in the West Indies, which is applicable to refining his agricultural techniques, can be nicely aligned with the georgic revivals of the long eighteenth century. Specifically, by juxtaposing Defoe’s ur-novel with Grainger’s popular georgic The Sugar-Cane, I want to suggest that Robinson Crusoe can be taken as the colonial georgic set in the West Indies.
Abstract
This essay investigates Robinson Crusoe’s engagement with the physical environment of the island. In line with an array of recent critical examinations of the eighteenth-century georgic revival and the renewed interest in the agency of nonhuman agents, to date, I argue that Crusoe’s relationship with the landscape in the island resonates with eighteenth-century British understandings of nature and the ideals of colonial expansionism. The ways in which Crusoe keeps track of the weather, climate, and seasonal changes in order to understand the pattern of nature and thus improve his cultivation epitomize Crusoe’s subjectivity as a quintessential “English husbandman.” Although Defoe is better known as an author of The Complete English Tradesman (1728)—a kind of conduct manual for aspiring middle rank English tradesman—than his abiding interest in cultivation and husbandry, Crusoe’s empirical observations of things within the island in the West Indies, which is applicable to refining his agricultural techniques, can be nicely aligned with the georgic revivals of the long eighteenth century. Specifically, by juxtaposing Defoe’s ur-novel with Grainger’s popular georgic The Sugar-Cane, I want to suggest that Robinson Crusoe can be taken as the colonial georgic set in the West Indies.
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