Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Maximillian E. Novak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint: University of Delaware Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.30cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.513kg
ISBN: 9781611495287
ISBN 10: 1611495288
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 19 April 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
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Reviews
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
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 *
Author Information
Maximillian E. Novak is distinguished research professor of English, emeritus, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
