This book describes the principles of Baconian science, and their influence on the thought and writing of Daniel Defoe.

The focus of this volume is the intersection and the cross-fertilization between the travel narrative, literary discourse, and the New Philosophy in the early modern to early eighteenth-century historical periods. Contributors examine how, in an historical era which realized an emphasis on nation and during a time when exploration was laying the foundation for empire, science and the literary discourse of the travel narrative become intrinsically linked. Together, the essays in this collection point out the way in which travel narratives reflect the anxiety from changes brought about through the discoveries of the 'new knowledge' and the way this knowledge in turn provided a new and more complex understanding of the expanding world in which the writers lived. The worlds in this text are many (for no 'world' is monomial), from the antipodes to the New World, from the heavens to the seas, and from fictional worlds to the world which contains and/or constructs one's nation and empire. All of these essays demonstrate the manner in which the New Philosophy dramatically changed literary discourse.

A study of the relationship between realism, probability and chance in eighteenth-century fiction.

Looking at literary discourse, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction, diaries, and drama, this collection offers remarkable and fascinating examples of women writers who integrated scientific material in their literary narratives.

Defoe and Fictional Time shows 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 Sterne; 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 Year is 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.

The publication of the 44-volume Works of Daniel Defoe continues with this collection of Defoe's satirical poetry and fantasy writings, and writings on the supernatural.

Having identified the literary origins of the Faustus legend in the late sixteenth-century German Faust Book and its English translation, this book argues that the Faustus typology emerged as a vehicle for discussing morality and beliefs. This study examines a broad spectrum of transformations of the thematic core of the legend, concentrating on Marlowe's play, Milton's and Fontenelle's responses to seventeenth-century science, Mountfort's farcical Faustus play and early eighteenth-century harlequinades.

A highly conscious wordsmith, Daniel Defoe used expository styles in his fiction and non-fiction that reflected his ability to perceive material and intellectual phenomena from opposing, but not contradictory perspectives. Moreover, the boundaries of genre within his wide-ranging oeuvre can prove highly fluid. In this study, Robert James Merrett approaches Defoe's body of work using interdisciplinary methods that recognize dialectic in his verbal creativity and cognitive awareness. Examining more than ninety of Defoe's works, Merrett contends that this author's literariness exploits a conscious dialogue that fosters the reciprocity of traditional and progressive authorial procedures. Along the way, he discusses Defoe's lexical and semantic sensibility, his rhetorical and aesthetic theories, his contrarian theology, and more. Merrett proposes that Defoe's contrarian outlook celebrates a view of consciousness that acknowledges the brain's bipartite structure, and in so doing illustrates how cognitive science may be applied to further explorations of narrative art.

The publication of the 44-volume Works of Daniel Defoe continues with this collection of Defoe's satirical poetry and fantasy writings, and writings on the supernatural.

The fullest and most complete survey of the development of science in the eighteenth century.