Prefaces to the Novel: Robinson Crusoe and Novelistic Form

ABSTRACT

In its early history the novel frequently deploys paratextual material to orient generic expectations, and in particular to navigate the often complex relation between the real and the fictional. Defoe's prefaces to the three instalments of the story of Robinson Crusoe map out an increasingly tortured attempt to puzzle out the world-forming quality of the novel and thus to construct a kind of proto-theory of novelistic form. Seeking both to claim the historical truth of the narrative and to deal with the consequences of the fact that that claim is untrue, these paratextual materials seek to reconcile novelistic invention with the revealed religious truth that stands above it.

KEYWORDS:

• Defoe
• fiction
• preface
• novel
• Robinson Crusoe

Notes

1. Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xvi.

2. Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, or The Defense of Poesy, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London: Thomas Nelson, 1965), 123.

3. Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 104.

4. Catherine Gallagher, ‘The Rise of Fictionality,’ in The Novel, Vol. I: History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 344.

5. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

6. Eric Hayot, On Literary Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 25.

7. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 118.

8. Richard P. Blackmur, ‘Introduction,’ Henry James, The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces (New York: Scribner, 1934), ix.

9. Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years all Alone on an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of AMERICA, Near the Mouth of the Great River of OROONOQUE; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein all the Men Perished but Himself. WITH An Account How He Was at Last as Strangely Deliver’d by PYRATES. Written by Himself (London: W. Taylor, 1719), n.p.

10. Maximillian E. Novak, ‘Defoe’s Theory of Fiction,’ Studies in Philology 61:4 (1964): 653.

11. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ed. Michael Shinagel, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edn. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), 3(n1).

12. Daniel Defoe, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of his Life, And of the Strange Surprizing Accounts of his Travels Round Three Parts of the Globe. Written by Himself (London: W. Taylor, 1719), n.p.

13. Charles Gildon, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr D---DeF---, of London, Hosier, Who Has Liv’d Above Fifty Years by Himself, in the Kingdoms of North and South Britain. The Various Shapes He Has Appear’d in, and the Discoveries He Has Made for the Benefit of His Country. In a Dialogue Between Him, Robinson Crusoe, and His Man Friday. With Remarks Serious and Comical Upon the Life of Crusoe (London: J. Roberts, 1719), viii, 33.

14. Daniel Defoe, ‘Robinson Crusoe’s Preface,’ Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With His Vision of the Angelick World. Written by Himself (London: W. Taylor, 1720), n.p.

15. Jeffrey Hopes, ‘Real and Imaginary Stories: Robinson Crusoe and the Serious Reflections,’ Eighteenth-Century Fiction 8:3 (1996): 320.

16. Kevin Seidel, ‘Robinson Crusoe as Defoe’s Theory of Fiction,’ Novel: A Forum on Fiction 44:2 (2011): 179–83.

17. Daniel Defoe, ‘A Vision of the Angelick World,’ Serious Reflections 83.

18. Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Norton Critical Edition, 127.

19. G.A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966).

20. ‘A pretender’s attitude toward the social world is too arrogant and too uncertain to make systematic mendacity worthwhile. Pretense is the result of a perpetual interest taken in the self, and a fascination with the sheer variety of its amusements.’ Jonathan Lamb, Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680–1840 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 198.