Daniel Defoe-Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas - Couverture rigide

Novak, Maximillian E.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0198126867 ISBN 13 : 9780198126867

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times. Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented on anything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to academies for women, from security for the aged to the dangers of the plague. In his fiction he created a type of vivid realism that powerfully influenced the development of the novel. The publication of works such as Robinson Crusoe are major events because they shape the ways in which we see our world, so that ever afterwards thoughts of desolation and desert islands immediately evoke Defoe's masterpiece. We should not be surprised: Defoe always wrote to make things happen. During his career as an author, he was a provocative pamphleteer, journalist, and poet; but when he was not writing, he was, at times, a spy and a double agent, a revolutionary and a dreamer. He was variously hunted by mobs with murderous intent and treated as a celebrity by the most powerful leaders of the country. Imprisoned four times or more, pilloried and reviled by his enemies, through it all he never lost confidence in his ability as a writer and thinker. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions is the first biography to view Defoe's complex life through the angle of vision that is most important to us as modern readers-his career as a writer. From his earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour, to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death, Defoe was pre-eminently a creator of fictions. This life gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that went into such great works as Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times. Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented on anything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to academies for women, from security for the aged to the dangers of the plague. In his fiction he created a type of vivid realism that powerfully influenced the development of the novel. The publication of works such as Robinson Crusoe are major events because they shape the ways in which we see our world, so that ever afterwards thoughts of desolation and desert islands immediately evoke Defoe's masterpiece. From his earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour, to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death, Defoe was pre-eminently a creator of fictions. This life gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that went into Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana.

Biographie de l'auteur

Professor Maximillian E. Novak is Professor of English Literature at UCLA. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford in 1961 and his interests include Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature; the Novel; Jewish-American Literature, Libertinism, Restoration Drama, the rise of the novel, primitivism, sensibility, madness, painting and the novel, the Gothic novel, Jewish-American writing of the immigrant period and after 1930

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 2001
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0198126867
• ISBN 13: 9780198126867
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 680
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie