ABSTRACT
The claim that Miguel de Cervantes was at all influential upon Daniel Defoe is intrinsically controversial and impossible to prove — there is simply not enough textual evidence to sustain such a hypothesis. However, besides the proven fact that Defoe wrote sheer picaresque novels, a number of scholars have suggested that he was influenced by Cervantes. The first of these was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who identified Cervantes's Persiles y Segismimda as a likely source for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. In order to understand the extent of Cervantes's model in conception of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe it might be necessary to recall the American sources. This becomes necessary to understand the Spanish influence in general and to locate in a more complete way the presence of Cervantes within that larger study. Religious behaviour in Robinson Crusoe means moral, practical conduct that brings with it a sense of interior appeasement and a sense of reconciliation with one's own fate.
