The Aesthetics of Mental Illness in Defoe’s Crusoe Trilogy

Abstract

Abstract This essay studies Robinson Crusoe’s ‘chronical Distemper’ of wanderlust in the context of early eighteenth-century concepts of mental illness, which often hinge on unruly passions and, even more specifically, an overactive imagination. Defoe describes Crusoe’s insatiable urge to ramble as a type of insanity that is rooted in fancy, not reason, yet simultaneously indicates that the expression of this impulse differentiates his character and generates magnificent gains. Although at odds with religious and medical warnings about the dangers of excessive passion, then, Defoe suggests that Crusoe’s ‘unconquerable’ wanderlust is a beneficial kind of madness that counteracts idleness and cements his distinctly English, merchant capitalist identity. More largely, the Crusoe trilogy as a whole contributes to early novelistic discourse by aligning mental illness, self-analysis, and the production of narrative, thereby stitching together evolving concepts of the human mind and literary form.