History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought, Series Number 33)

ISBN: 0521563771

Author: Mayer, Robert

Condition: New

Robert Mayer argues that the modern English novel emerged from historical writing. Historical discourse in the seventeenth century embraced not only "history" in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer shows how the narratives of Daniel Defoe--unlike those of his contemporaries Aphra Behn and Delarivire Manley--were read, in their own time, as history, making connections that later novelists developed. This new study makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the origins of the novel in Britain.