Defoe's Footprints: Essays in Honour of Maximillian E. Novak (UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series)

In Defoe's Footprints , essays by prominent scholars of eighteenth-century literature salute Maximillian E. Novak's influence upon the study of Daniel Defoe. Best known today as the author of Robinson Crusoe , Defoe was a prolific writer in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who wrote novels, essays, pamphlets, and poems. Widely extending Novak's perspectives, this volume explores Defoe's place in the English novel and in literary developments of mimesis, realism, and popular mythology. The contributors locate Defoe in new ways within the complex symbolism and discourse of a turbulent world of burgeoning capitalism, Protestantism, imperialism, and economic speculation. With attention to Defoe's neglected writings as well as to his important works, this volume uncovers his distance from and influence on modern literature, paying tribute to Maximillian E. Novak by presenting new ideas about, and new readings of, Daniel Defoe.

In Defoe's Footprints, essays by prominent scholars of eighteenth-century literature salute Maximillian E. Novak's influence upon the study of Daniel Defoe. Best known today as the author of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe was a prolific writer in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who wrote novels, essays, pamphlets, and poems. Widely extending Novak's perspectives, this volume explores Defoe's place in the English novel and in literary developments of mimesis, realism, and popular mythology.

The contributors locate Defoe in new ways within the complex symbolism and discourse of a turbulent world of burgeoning capitalism, Protestantism, imperialism, and economic speculation. With attention to Defoe's neglected writings as well as to his important works, this volume uncovers his distance from and influence on modern literature, paying tribute to Maximillian E. Novak by presenting new ideas about, and new readings of, Daniel Defoe.

"In Defoe's Footprints, essays by prominent scholars of eighteenth-century literature salute Maximillian E. Novak's influence upon the study of Daniel Defoe. Best known today as the author of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe was a prolific writer in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who wrote novels, essays, pamphlets, and poems. Widely extending Novak's perspectives, this volume explores Defoe's place in the English novel and in literary developments of mimesis, realism, and popular mythology." "The contributors locate Defoe in new ways within the complex symbolism and discourse of a turbulent world of burgeoning capitalism, Protestantism, imperialism, and economic speculation. With attention to Defoe's neglected writings as well as to his important works, this volume uncovers his distance from and influence on modern literature, paying tribute to Maximillian E. Novak by presenting new ideas about, and new readings of, Daniel Defoe." --Résumé de l'éditeur Contents 5 Introduction 9 1. Defoe’s Silences 18 2. The Atmospheres of Robinson Crusoe 38 3. Poetic Footprints: Some Formal Issues in Defoe’s Verse 61 4. Mimesis/mimesis and the Eighteenth-Century British Novel: Representation and Knowledge 77 5. Robinson Crusoe and the Semiotic Crisis of the Eighteenth 104 6. Powerful Affections: Slaves, Servants, and Labours of Love in Defoe’s Writing 132 7. Defoe’s ‘Black Prince’: Elitism, Capitalism, and Cultural Difference 159 8. ‘The Project and the People’: Defoe on the South Sea Bubble and the Public Good 176 9. The Writer as Hero from Jonson to Fielding 195 10. Robinson Trousseau: Joyce’s Defoe 212 11. The Novel as Modern Myth 229 Maximillian E. Novak: A Bibliography 245 Contributors 257 Index 261