Positioning Daniel Defoe's Non-Fiction

Reviews / Votes

'I finished Positioning Daniel Defoe's Non-Fiction convinced of the argument made in its introduction: that Defoe innovated formally in his non-fiction in orderto engage, persuade, and move his reader. The collection does an excellent job of showing us how and of tracing patterns across some of the many genres in which Defoe wrote. It will be required reading for Defoe scholars, and it will be of interest to many students with a more general interest in the popular writing of the early eighteenth century.', Jess Edwards, Manchester Metropolitan University, in Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries 4, no. 1 (fall 2012), pp. 83-87, p. 87."The nine essays in this book accurately analyze not only the contexts of Defoe's writing on topics as diverse as England's union with Scotland, the present and future growth of London, Jacobite threats, religious bigotry, convergence of masculine and feminine psychology in the conduct of tradesmen, the devastation wrought by a fierce storm in 1703, and what he took to be the oddly constituted reality of ghosts. Even more importantly, these essays explain the large repertoire of genres and rhetorical strategies Defoe had mastered for use as he thought different occasions demanded. What results is better understanding of his great skill as a professional writer on matters of fact or speculation, and therefore better appreciation of an author whose strange, surprising leap of genius to Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders can neither be chalked off to lucky amateur accident nor, even in retrospect, viewed as a predictable, inevitable progress from capable journalism to innovative artistry."-Paul K. Alkon, Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA