Paperback : £38.26
This book explores significant problems in the fiction of Daniel Defoe. Maximillian E. Novak investigates a number of elements in Defoe's work by probing his interest in rendering of reality (what Defoe called "the Thing itself"). Novak examines Defoe's interest in the relationship between prose fiction and painting, as well as the various ways in which Defoe's woks were read by contemporaries and by those novelists who attempted to imitate and comment upon his Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe decades after its publication. In this book, Novak attempts to consider the uniqueness and imaginativeness of various aspects of Defoe's writings including his way of evoking the seeming inability of language to describe a vivid scene or moments of overwhelming emotion, his attraction to the fiction of islands and utopias, his gradual development of the concepts surrounding Crusoe's cave, his fascination with the horrors of cannibalism, and some of the ways he attempted to defend his work and serious fiction in general. Most of all, Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives establishes the complexity and originality of Defoe as a writer of fiction.
This book explores significant problems in the fiction of Daniel Defoe. Maximillian E. Novak investigates a number of elements in Defoe's work by probing his interest in rendering of reality (what Defoe called "the Thing itself"). Novak examines Defoe's interest in the relationship between prose fiction and painting, as well as the various ways in which Defoe's woks were read by contemporaries and by those novelists who attempted to imitate and comment upon his Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe decades after its publication. In this book, Novak attempts to consider the uniqueness and imaginativeness of various aspects of Defoe's writings including his way of evoking the seeming inability of language to describe a vivid scene or moments of overwhelming emotion, his attraction to the fiction of islands and utopias, his gradual development of the concepts surrounding Crusoe's cave, his fascination with the horrors of cannibalism, and some of the ways he attempted to defend his work and serious fiction in general. Most of all, Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives establishes the complexity and originality of Defoe as a writer of fiction.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Defoe as an Innovator of Fictional Form
Chapter 2: Picturing the Thing Itself, or Not: Defoe, Painting,
Prose Fiction, and the Arts of Describing
Chapter 3: The Unmentionable and the Ineffable in Defoe's
Fiction
Chapter 4: Novel or Fictional Memoir: The Scandalous Publication of
Robinson Crusoe
Chapter 5: Meatless Fridays: CAnnibalism as Theme and Metaphor in
Robinson Crusoe
Chapter 6: Edenic Desires: Robinson Crusoe, The Robinsonade, and
Utopian Forms
Chapter 7: Strangely Surpriz'd by Robinson Crusoe: A Response to
David Fishelov's "Robinson Crusoe, 'The Other,' and the Poetics of
Surprise"
Chapter 8: "Looking with Wonder Upon the Sea" : Defoe's Maritime
Fictions, Robinson Crusoe, and "The Curious Age We Live in"
Chapter 9: The Cave and the Grotto: Imagined Interiors and Realist
Form in Robinson Crusoe
Chapter 10: "The SUme of Humane Misery?": Ambiguities of Exile in
Defoe's Fiction
Chapter 11: Ideological Tendencies in Three Crusoe Narratives by
British Novelists during the Period following the French
Revolution: Charles Dibdin's Hannah Hewit, The Demale Crusoe, Maria
Edgeworth's Forester, and Frances Burney's The Wanderer
Afterword
Bibliography
About the Author
Maximillian E. Novak is distinguished research professor of English, emeritus, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Written over the span of 20 years, all but one of them previously
published, these 11 essays consider the tripartite thematic
suggested in the title. 'Transformations' refers to questions of
genre and how Defoe advanced toward a new form of fiction,
principally in Robinson Crusoe, but also in other work. 'Ideology'
is represented in Defoe’s own work and in the work of writers he
inspired--Hannah Hewit, Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney. 'Real'
shows up in such chapters as the second, which frames Defoe’s
realism within a perspective drawn from Dutch paintings. . . .The
book offers a winsome look at Novak’s early years of studying
Defoe, and it concludes with ruminations on Defoe’s present and
future importance. In the end, this is a significant contribution
to Defoe studies because it includes fine essays (among them the
brilliant 'Meatless Fridays: Cannibalism as Theme and Metaphor in
Robinson Crusoe') bristling with scholarly expertise and alert
familiarity with critical theory, written in a clear and winning
style. This volume cumulates the wisdom of a distinguished scholar
who has lived in intimacy with his subject for some six decades.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers,
faculty.
*CHOICE*
Novak has established Defoe as a major intellectual, and his many
writings convincingly show that Defoe grappled with the key
problems of his day, both practical and theoretical.
*Eighteenth-Century Fiction*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
