features
“She Never Had Been a Bride in Her Life”: The Marriage of Roxana and Amy
Sarah Rasher
"This article is not about gay marriage—except to the extent that it is. Rather, it is about two fictional women who probably never have sex with each other. One of them marries two men during the novel, and the other, as the quotation in my title notes, is never a bride in her life. In spite of this, the two women—the eponymous narrator of Daniel Defoe’s 1724 novel, Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress, and her faithful maid, Amy—act very much like a married couple . . . " Read more . . .
“Two broad shining eyes”: Optic Impressions, Natural Imprints, and Landscape in Robinson Crusoe
Emmanuelle Peraldo
"Robinson Crusoe tries to imprint himself on the pristine space of the island on which he accidentally lands, after a period of utter rejection of it, as is epitomized in the numerous objects from his past life and civilization that he fetches from the wreck and carefully keeps with him during his first thirteen days as a castaway . . . " Read more . . .
Daniel Defoe, William Hone, and The Right Divine of Kings to Govern Wrong! A New Electronic Edition
Kyle Grimes
"In 1821, William Hone was one of the most widely known and widely read writers in England. In 1817, his successful self-defense against the Attorney General’s ex officio charges of blasphemy and sedition had made Hone famous as a champion of the free press as well as a popular parodist and political satirist. Then from late 1819 into 1821, Hone published his extremely influential series of Cruikshank-illustrated pamphlets —The Political House that Jack Built, The Man in the Moon, The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder, and others—which sold, by Richard Altick’s count, as many as 250,000 copies (382)." Read more . . .
pedagogies
Can (Role-) Playing the French Revolution En Français Also Teach the Eighteenth Century?
Peggy Schaller
"As a professor of French in a four-year liberal arts university, I am called on to be a generalist in all things French. Confronted with the prospect of teaching that perennial staple, French Culture and Civilization (C&C), to American university students as part of their French language program, I faced the anxiety that often comes with the freedom of teaching such a broad and all-encompassing subject." Read more . . .
NOTES
Daniel Defoe, Bailiffs, and Westminster 1694–1706
Sheldon Rogers
"What has been hidden to date from Defoe scholars is the fact that Defoe was arrested by bailiffs and given notice to leave lodgings belonging to Lord Weymouth (1640–1714) in April 1697 . . . " Read more . . .
Reviews
Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth, by Katherine Frank
Reviewed by Manuel Schonhorn
Daniel Defoe: The Novels, by Nicholas Marsh
Reviewed by Aino Mäkikalli
The Fortress of American Solitude: Robinson Crusoe and Antebellum Culture, by Shawn Thomson
Reviewed by Katie McGettigan
“Matters of Blood”: Defoe and the Cultures of Violence, by Oliver Lindner
Reviewed by Christopher F. Loar
Positioning Defoe’s Non-Fiction: Form, Function, Genre, edited by Aino Mäkikalli and Andreas K. E. Mueller
Reviewed by Jess Edwards
Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England, by Nicola Parsons
Reviewed by Nicholas Seager
Robinson Crusoe’s Economic Man: A Construction and Deconstruction, edited by Ulla Grapard and Gillian Hewitson
Reviewed by Dwight Codr
The Female Crusoe: Hybridity, Trade and the Eighteenth-Century Individual, by C. M. Owen.
Reviewed by Robert Clark
