Defoe and Fictional Time

by Alkon, Paul K.

• ISBN13: 9780820337715
• ISBN10: 0820337714
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Defoe and Fictional Timeshows Defoe's relevance to issues now central to criticism of the novel; relationships between narrative time and clock time, the influence of time concepts shared by writers and their audience, and above all the questions of how fiction shapes the phenomenal time of reading. Paul K. Alkon offers first a study of time in Defoe's fiction, with glances at Richardson, Fielding, and Ster≠ and second a theoretical discussion of time in fiction. Arguing that eighteenth-century views of history account for the strange chronologies in Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders,and Roxana,Alkon explores Defoe's innovative use of narrative sequences, frequency, spatial form, chronology, settings, tempo, and the reader's cumulative memories of a text. Defoe's Journal of the Plague Yearis the first portrayal of a public duration-passing time shared by an entire population during a crisis-ranking Defoe among the most creative writers who have explored the way in which fictional time may influence reading time.