Emphatic Italic Language Analysis

3.3. Emphatic Italics

In the process of evaluating of the instances of usage of the italic typeface in Robinson Crusoe, there have been found cases that do not fall under any widely-accepted in the eighteenth century grammatical or semantical category; therefore, they have been categorised as instances of emphatic use of the font. As already mentioned in the second part of the paper, the reader can only interpret the investment of the author in the emphasised words, hence the following explanations of possible reasons for Defoe’s using italics are subjective and can be disputed/questioned because belong to the author of this paper. For example, to highlight the new milestone in Robinson’s life and narration, his date of arrival on the island

The three passages connected/linked together by one topic contain distinctly purposeful italicisation: the pieces of information highlighted in such a way are all exclusively Poll’s words/utterances and are crucial/decisive/pivotal//critical/paramount for the interpretation of the whole scene. However, it should be mentioned that the italicised elements under discussion consist only a small part of the paragraphs. In the first one, only the repeatedly used name “Robin Crusoe” is italicised. In the second one, there are two distinct/separate instances where either the name “Robin Crusoe” or the questions Crusoe has taught to the parrot earlier occur in italics. In the third and the last paragraph of the episode, visual emphasis is on two existential questions that Poll asks, but the narrator does not explain the origin of these

Yet, all these functions have nothing in common either with the initial use of the font or with the convention existing in the early eighteenth century, when Robinson Crusoe was written and published. Hence, to analyse the typography of the novel a research of the history of the typefont under discussion has been conducted and the most frequent uses of the font relevant for the literary work in question have been found/analysed.In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the authorship was still a rather vague category. The writers were not completely independent: disregarding the Copyright Act of 1710, the most authors usually surrendered all rights on/to/for their works to the publishers. There is a strong evidence/belief/suspicion that Defoe was not an exception, that is he did not own the copyright of Robinson Crusoe himself. Consequently, it seems improbable that the whole responsibility for all instances of typography in the novel rested with