History & the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe: 33 (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought, Series Number 33)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Revised ed., 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521604475, ISBN10: 0521604478
Paperback, 264 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
This new study of the origins of the English novel argues that the novel emerged from historical writing. Examining historical writers and forms frequently neglected by earlier scholars, Robert Mayer shows that in the seventeenth century historical discourse embraced not only 'history' in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer thus explains why Defoe's narratives were initially read as history. It is the acceptance of the claims to historicity, the study argues, that differentiates Defoe's fictions from those of writers like Thomas Deloney and Aphra Behn, important writers who nevertheless have figured less prominently than Defoe in discussions of the novel. Mayer ends by exploring the theoretical implications of the history-fiction connection. His study makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the emergence of what we now call the novel in Britain in the eighteenth century.
Introduction
1. Baconian historiography
the contours of historical discourse in seventeenth-century England
2. 'Idle trash' or 'Reliques of something true'? the fate of Brute and Arthur and the power of tradition
3. The History of Myddle
memory, history, and power
4. Lifewriting and historiography, fiction and fact
Baxter, Clarendon, and Hutchingson on the English civil war
5. The secret history of the last Stuart kings
6. 'Knowing strange things'
the historical discourse in the century before Robinson Crusoe
7. 'History' before Defoe
Nashe, Deloney, Behn, Manley
8. Defoe's historical practice
from 'The Ages Humble Servant' to Major Alexander Ramkins
9. 'Facts that are form'd to touch the mind'
Defoe's narratives as forms of historical discourse
10. From history to the novel
the reception of Defoe
Conclusion
Index.