University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press
Pages: 240
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-61149-485-3 • Hardback • October 2014 • $97.00 • (£75.00)
978-1-61149-528-7 • Paperback • April 2016 • $45.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-61149-486-0 • eBook • October 2014 • $43.50 • (£33.00)
Maximillian E. Novak is distinguished research professor of English, emeritus, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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
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