Lecture 10: The Seventeenth Century
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe is remembered today as the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, and as the founder of the novel. But during his life, his primary occupation was as a journalist, and he is considered by many to be the father of modern journalism. He was also practiced at satire; in fact, he was pilloried for his pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which lampooned those who persecuted Dissenters.
His journalistic style, as well as his predisposition to satire, are evident in his novels. Many of his readers took his novels to be factual; A Journal of the Plague Year, in fact, rivals Samuel Pepys' Diary in its attention to detail. And, although it is clear that his stories are fictions, they are also challenges to complacency and conventional morality. Some critics believe that Defoe himself was ambivalent about his characters; more likely, he was using his characters to encourage his readers to question their preconceived and unforgiving notions about a society which created immorality and then took pleasure in condemning it. Moll Flanders, for instance, was presented as completely immoral but endlessly resourceful; the reader is given reason to sympathize with her even when she is doing her worst. Roxana laments her lost opportunities, but her reasons for rejecting those opportunities are good ones.
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Some of the information in this lecture derives from:
1. "England: A Narrative History," by Peter Williams, on the Go Brittania website
2. Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study, by James Sutherland
3. The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Daniel De Foe, by Paul Dottin