We do not usually think of Robinson Crusoe as a novel. Defoe's first full-length work of fiction seems to fall more naturally into place with Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote, the great myths of our civilization. What these myths are about is fairly easy to say. Their basic plots, their enduring images, all exhibit a single-minded pursuit by the protagonist of one of the characteristic aspirations of Western man. Each of them embodies an arete and a hubris, an exceptional prowess and a vitiating excess, in spheres of action that are particularly important in our culture. Don Quixote, the impetuous generosity and the limiting blindness of chivalric idealism; Don Juan, pursuing and at the same time tormented by the idea of boundless experience of women; Faustus, the great knower, whose curiosity, always unsatisfied, causes him to be damned.