Roxana est cense etre l'autobiographie de la belle mademoiselle Beleau, fille de refugies protestants, elevee en Angleterre et mariee au fils d'un brasseur. Ce bon-a-rien dilapide ses biens et abandonne sa femme, alors agee de vingt-deux ans, et ses cinq enfants. Pour survivre et nourrir sa famille, Roxana se tourne vers la prostitution et devient la maitresse du proprietaire de la demeure ou elle residait avec son mari, puis se lie a de nombreux aristocrates et hommes d'affaires anglais, francais et hollandais.

Lady Roxana

Présentation de l'éditeurPublié en 1722 – soit trois ans après Robinson Crusoé –, Colonel Jack est sans doute, au côté de Moll Flanders, la plus grande réussite de l’écrivain dans la veine picaresque. Rêvant d’une destinée éclatante, Jack, un gamin ramassé dans le ruisseau londonien, entend devenir à la force du poignet un authentique gentleman. Mais Defoe ne serait pas Defoe s’il se bornait à nous raconter le parcours d’un homme de caractère. Jack réussira, soit ; mais après s’être frotté à toutes les fripouilles, et avoir manqué cent fois de devenir fripouille lui-même. On ne s’étonnera pas que, chemin faisant, il emprunte quelques épisodes – calamiteux le plus souvent – à la vie de Defoe en personne. En y rajoutant il est vrai une forte dose d’aventures de son cru : rapt, voyages forcés, engagements militaires (avec blessures), opérations commerciales du genre risqué, capture par un corsaire français, esclavage...Biographie de l'auteurDaniel Defoe, de son vrai nom Daniel Foe, né en 1660 et décédé en 1731 à Londres, est issu d’une famille originaire des Flandres. Après avoir été commerçant à travers l’Europe, fervent partisan du libéralisme et du mercantilisme, il s’est fait connaître en politique avec la publication de pamphlets prônant le renversement du roi Jacques II. En 1719, il invente Robinson Crusoé, ce marin échoué sur une île déserte qui ne s’est pas seulement contenté de parcourir le monde, mais a également traversé les siècles : il représente l’imaginaire des contrées lointaines et des utopies sauvages pour chaque génération de lecteurs. Robinson Crusoé, tel un mythe, se réincarne de mille façons. Tantôt en littérature, tantôt au cinéma ou à la télévision, il inspire nombre d’artistes sur les thèmes du voyage, de la liberté et de la survie.

Colonel Jack

Robinson Crusoe is an Englishman from the town of York in the seventeenth century, the youngest son of a merchant of German origin. Encouraged by his father to study law, Crusoe expresses his wish to go to sea instead. His family is against Crusoe going out to sea, and his father explains that it is better to seek a modest, secure life for oneself. Initially, Robinson is committed to obeying his father, but he eventually succumbs to temptation and embarks on a ship bound for London with a friend. When a storm causes the near deaths of Crusoe and his friend, the friend is dissuaded from sea travel, but Crusoe still goes on to set himself up as merchant on a ship leaving London. This trip is financially successful, and Crusoe plans another, leaving his early profits in the care of a friendly widow. The second voyage does not prove as fortunate: the ship is seized by Moorish pirates, and Crusoe is enslaved to a potentate in the North African town of Sallee. While on a fishing expedition, he and a slave boy break free and sail down the African coast. A kindly Portuguese captain picks them up, buys the slave boy from Crusoe, and takes Crusoe to Brazil. In Brazil, Crusoe establishes himself as a plantation owner and soon becomes successful. Eager for slave labor and its economic advantages, he embarks on a slave-gathering expedition to West Africa but ends up shipwrecked off of the coast of Trinidad...

Robinson Crusoe

Roman d'aventures sur le mode d'une autobiographie, Robinson Crusoé raconte les péripéties qu'un marin échoué sur une île déserte vit à la suite d'un naufrage. Optimiste, inventif et énergique, Robinson surmonte toutes les difficultés et apprend une nouvelle forme de bonheur en étant tour à tour cultivateur, artisan et guerrier. Ce récit invite à une réflexion profonde sur la place de l'homme dans la nature et pose au lecteur la question très actuelle de la différence, avec l'arrivée de l'indigène Vendredi.

Robinson crusoe

Robinson Crusoé ; 1ère partie

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Robinson Crusoé

Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (full title: The Fortunate Mistress: Or, A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim, in Germany, Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II) is a 1724 novel by Daniel Defoe. The novel examines the possibility of eighteenth-century women owning their own estate despite a patriarchal society, as with Roxana's celebrated claim that "the Marriage Contract is ... nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and everything, to the Man". The novel further draws attention to the incompatibility between sexual freedom and freedom from motherhood: Roxana becomes pregnant many times due to her sexual exploits, and it is one of her children, Susan, who come back to expose her, years later, near the novel's close, helping to precipitate her flight abroad, subsequent loss of wealth, and (ambiguous) repentance.

The character of Roxana can be described as a proto-feminist because she carries out her actions of prostitution for her own ends of freedom but before a feminist ideology was fully formed, (though Defoe also works to undercut the radicalism of her position). The book also explores the clash of values between the Restoration court and the middle-class.

Roxana also discusses the issues of truth and deceit. As the text is a first-person narration and written to simulate a real first-hand account of a woman, first comes the issue of subjectivity, but also the underlying lie as to the veracity of the text. The reader can only trust in Roxana to give us a true account of her story, but as she often lies to other characters in the book, and even to herself, she is not a reliable narrator. Furthermore, the whole construction of her character is made on lies and disguises. Her name, or names, are not mentioned until the end of the novel, so even the most basic aspect of her identity - her name - is a mystery for the majority of the novel. And the name that is most associated to her: Roxana, is based on a lie and on a disguise, namely the Turkish dress. Published anonymously, and not attributed to Defoe till 1775, Roxana was nonetheless a popular hit in the eighteenth century, frequently reprinted in altered versions to suit the taste of the day: thus the 1775 edition, which called itself The New Roxana, had been sentimentalised to meet the tastes of the day.

Roxana : The Fortunate Mistress

Robinson Crusoe, figlio di una famiglia agiata, ha davanti a sé un tranquillo futuro di uomo di legge o di commerciante. Ma il desiderio di conoscere il mondo lo assilla al punto che, ignorando le raccomandazioni paterne, si imbarca su una piccola nave, diretto a Londra. Da quel momento la sua esistenza sarà un susseguirsi di avventure terribili e straordinarie. Fino al giorno in cui, unico superstite di un naufragio, finisce su un'isola deserta, dove lo aspetta la sfida più ardua: sopravvivere con il solo aiuto del suo ingegno, in compagnia soltanto di se stesso e col sostegno esclusivo della sua forza interiore.

«Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) n'est guère connu en France que par Robinson Crusoé, alors qu'il est l'auteur de plus de cinq cents oeuvres, dont une dizaine constituent l'acte de naissance du roman anglais, sinon du roman tout court. Roxana, Moll Flanders, le Journal de l'année de la peste sont sans doute les premiers exemples d'un effort conscient pour transformer une relation minutieuse de la réalité en une oeuvre d'art. La dimension artistique de celle-ci réside précisément dans la nature particulière du regard porté par l'auteur, qui prétend s'effacer derrière les données brutes qui auraient été portées à sa connaissance. Si Robinson Crusoé fit un triomphe chez les enfants, c'est que Defoe fit de son héros un des grands personnages mythiques du monde moderne.» Jean Gattégno.

Lady Roxana

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