introduccion

from the merchant, the truth is that he ended up being an important writer, and a great journalist-such a time the first true professional of the English journalism -, and even a considerable poet, although, as we have already commented, great part of his literary work carried out by the salary of the two antagonistic political groups. This enormous flexibility allowed him to end up being dealer in life, traveller, journalist, writer and double agent, the one that facilitated him to be reincarnated in new characters and to transform them into perfectly coherent individuals and true-to-life in literature.
If it is imprecise interpreting the adventure of Robinson Crusoe like a parable of Defoe's life, what seems to accept the whole critic of Defoe is the considerable allegorical content that comes off from the novel, and that it can be understood as one of the topics that unify the book.
In accordance with this approach, the adventure of Robinson rotates around his religious conversion in such a way that his reclusion in the island can be understood as a metaphor of the limitations that imposes Robinson Crusoe the loss of the grace, his sin state. The allegorical-religious outline is perhaps innate in an author that, as Defoe, is heir of an alive religious tradition from the Middle Ages, and inhabits a historical moment deeply moved by religious questions. Crusoe's victory on the geographical and natural environment that surrounds him at the same time can be understood as a symbol of the spiritual victory of Crusoe on his soul in sin, and the revelation process can be recognised in many of the details that Defoe introduces that possess symbolic echoes in numerous cases.
His spiritual adventure is almost comparable and equivalent to his real adventure, and in the first one, in accordance with Tillyard⁴ , we can recognise his progress that reminds the medieval character Pliers Plowman, which begins his road in the practical and active life to go step by step reaching the contemplative one. Also Crusoe reconstructs his life since the shipwreck until the return to the social nucleus from which he proceeds and the whole process is carried out in tension and constant monologue with God. It is also possible to recognise in Robinson Crusoe other classic character from the medieval English tradition: to Everyman, the allegorical character of the most

NOTES:

4- TILLYARD, E. M. W., "Defoe" in XXth Century Interpretation of Daniel Defoe, Prentice Hall, 1969.

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