- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
-
1 Milton’s Spots -
2 Critical Mass -
3 ‘A Fine Paradisaical Notion’ -
4 ‘In the Dun Air Sublime’ -
5 Milton’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy -
6 John Dennis, John Locke, and the Sublimation of Revolt -
7 ‘To Secure Our Freedom’ -
8 Milton Modulated for Handel’s Music -
9 John Dryden Meets, Rhymes, and Says Farewell to John Milton -
10 ‘I Still Deny’d, Much Pleas’d to Hear You Sue’ -
11 Angel Bodies to Whig Souls -
12 Yet Once More -
13 Milton’s Pope -
14 The Circling Hours -
15 ‘In Power of Others, Never in My Own’ -
16 Milton and the Restoration Literae -
17 Milton, Newton, and the Implications of Arianism -
18 Friday as Fit Help -
19 Early Modern Marriage in a Secular Age -
20 Haak’s Milton -
21 Miltonic Texts and European Politics, 1674–1682 -
22 Purging the Visual Nerve -
23 Some Thoughts on Periodization -
24 Milton, the Long Restoration, and Pope’s Iliad -
25 Paradise Lost and English Mock Heroic -
26 Milton and the People -
27 Paradise Lost in the Long Restoration, 1660–1742 -
28 Raphael’s Condescension -
29 ‘His Ears Now Were Eyes to Him’ - Bibliography
- Index
Friday as Fit Help
Friday as Fit Help
- Chapter:
- (p.335) 18 Friday as Fit Help
- Source:
- Milton in the Long Restoration
- Author(s):
Mary Nyquist
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Cultural status, periodization, and disciplinary boundaries have combined to prevent consideration of Defoe’s interest in Milton. Detailed narratological analysis shows how the famous scene where Friday voluntarily subjects himself to his ‘master’ is indebted to the episode of Paradise Lost where Adam’s desire for a ‘fit help’ is providentially satisfied. In both, the lonely male European’s needs are given narrative priority and affective, ideological significance. Defoe’s trilogy, however, revisions transatlantic slavery so as to make it appear the result of contract not violence or status, a project in line with contemporary ameliorative discourses. To this end, Robinson Crusoe takes issue with Locke’s appeal to self-preservation in the Second Treatise’s theorization of slavery; Defoe, like Milton, emphasizes servitude’s origins in divine penalty. Its cannily ambiguous stance towards the Royal African Company’s monopoly, together with evidence regarding day-names, reveal Robinson Crusoe’s commitment to racialized slavery.
Keywords: cannibalism, Defoe, Milton, Locke, identification, narratology, Paradise Lost, political theory, racialization, Robinson Crusoe, Royal African Company, transatlantic slavery
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
-
1 Milton’s Spots -
2 Critical Mass -
3 ‘A Fine Paradisaical Notion’ -
4 ‘In the Dun Air Sublime’ -
5 Milton’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy -
6 John Dennis, John Locke, and the Sublimation of Revolt -
7 ‘To Secure Our Freedom’ -
8 Milton Modulated for Handel’s Music -
9 John Dryden Meets, Rhymes, and Says Farewell to John Milton -
10 ‘I Still Deny’d, Much Pleas’d to Hear You Sue’ -
11 Angel Bodies to Whig Souls -
12 Yet Once More -
13 Milton’s Pope -
14 The Circling Hours -
15 ‘In Power of Others, Never in My Own’ -
16 Milton and the Restoration Literae -
17 Milton, Newton, and the Implications of Arianism -
18 Friday as Fit Help -
19 Early Modern Marriage in a Secular Age -
20 Haak’s Milton -
21 Miltonic Texts and European Politics, 1674–1682 -
22 Purging the Visual Nerve -
23 Some Thoughts on Periodization -
24 Milton, the Long Restoration, and Pope’s Iliad -
25 Paradise Lost and English Mock Heroic -
26 Milton and the People -
27 Paradise Lost in the Long Restoration, 1660–1742 -
28 Raphael’s Condescension -
29 ‘His Ears Now Were Eyes to Him’ - Bibliography
- Index
