Defoe as Historian
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23464671 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca Bullard (University of Reading, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Pages | 161-176 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-18 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198827177.013.9 |
| OpenAlex | W4389917718 |
| ISBN | 9780198827177 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 1 |
Across his lifetime, Daniel Defoe wrote a number of works of history in a range of genres. These include pamphlets that survey recent developments in state affairs, secret histories that purport to expose behind-the-scenes political machinations, full-scale histories such as The History of the Union of Great Britain (1709/10), and historical novels such as Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720). This chapter argues that to understand Defoe as a historian we must acknowledge his work as a political agent and recognize that the writing of history in this period was not a dispassionate exercise that strove for objectivity, but rather a means to promulgate a particular partisan outlook. Defoe’s historical fictions grow out of his practice as a political writer, but they also reach for imaginative and affective engagements with the past, and thereby constitute a new kind of historical writing.
Art · Art history · Epistemology · Knight · Literature · Memoir · Objectivity (philosophy) · Political history · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · South African History and Culture
| Highly cited | No |
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