SOURCE: "The 'Occasion' of Robinson Crusoe" in The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe's Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in "Robinson Crusoe," The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966, pp. 1–22.

Below, Hunter discredits certain assumptions about what inspired Robinson Crusoe as well as the notion that the book falls into the tradition of travel literature; he asserts that Crusoe is a Christian work in which geographical facts are introduced primarily for their narrative function.

Interpretive problems in eighteenth-century fiction result not so much from a lack of historical interest and knowledge as from a disguised antihistoricism in applying known facts, for it is often tempting to use history rather than surrender to it. Defoe study has, I think, more often settled for the illusion of history than for a full, rigorous, and sensitive examination of the assumed contexts of a particular work. Old generalizations have often seemed more valid than they really are...