Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought)

Language: English

Published by Cambridge University Press, 1993

0521420865 / 9780521420860

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Hardcover, xix + 263 pages, NOT ex-library. Faint age-discolourations on outer page edges, some internal creases, else little wear. Book is clean and bright, with unmarked text and firm binding, free of inscriptions and stamps. Dust jacket shows gentle sunning to the spine and edges, a bit of edgewear. -- This book seeks to recover something of the original excitement, challenge, and significance of Defoe's four novels of criminal life by reading them within and against the conventions of early eighteenth-century criminal biography. Crime raised deeply troubling questions in Defoe's time, not least because it seemed a powerful sign of the breakdown of traditional social authority and order. Arguing that Defoe's novels provided ways of facing working through, as well as avoiding, certain of the moral and intellectual difficulties that crime raised for him and his readers, Faller shows how the "literary," even "aesthetic" qualities of his fiction contributed to these ends. Analyzing the various ways in which Defoe's novels exploited, deformed, and departed from the genre they imitate, this book attempts to define the specific social and political (which is to say moral and ideological) value of a given set of "literary" texts against those of a more "ordinary" form of narrative. Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana are given extended readings in individual chapters. Other topics considered at length include the vexed question of Defoe's realism, his own version of reader response theory and how he deploys it, the novels' structural imitation of providential design, and his recurrent, almost obsessive effort to blunt or deny the commonly held notion that trade was somehow equivalent to theft. --Contents: 1. Romancing the Real: The "Field" of Criminal Biography 2. Defoe's Realism: Rough Frames, Strange Voices, Surprisingly Various Subjects and Readers Made More Present to Themselves 3. The Copious Text: Opening the Door to Inference, or, Room for Those Who Know How to Read It 4. Intimations of an Invisible Hand: The Mind Exercised, Enlarged, and Kept in Play by Strange Concurrences 5. The General Scandal Upon Business: Unanswerable Doubts, and the Text as a Field Supporting Very Nice Distinctions 6. The Frontiers of Dishonesty, the Addition and Concurrence of Circumstances: More on the Strategic Situating of Names 7. Notions Different From All the World: Criminal Stupidity, the Self and the Symbolic Order; Closing Comments: Truth, Complexity, Common Sense, and Empty Spaces.…

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Title
Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought)
Author
Lincoln B. Faller
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication year
1993
Condition
Good+
Dust jacket
Very Good
Binding
Hardcover
Language
English
ISBN 10
0521420865
ISBN 13
9780521420860
Edition
1st Edition

killarneybooks

Inagh, Clare, Ireland

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All U.S.-bound orders are now shipped with UPS for reliable delivery. Additional customs or import fees are highly unlikely; however, please note buyers remain responsible for any duties or taxes that U.S. Customs may assess. -- Killarneybooks is a family-run bookshop based in the Republic of Ireland. We take pride in accurate listings, careful packaging, and prompt service - most orders ship within 24 hours. All books listed are in stock and ready for immediate dispatch - we are not dropshippers. Inquiries always welcome.…

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