Dennis Todd

The Americas appear as an evocative setting in more than half of Daniel Defoe's novels, and often offer a new beginning for his characters. In the first full-length study of Defoe and colonialism, Dennis Todd explores why the New World loomed so large in Defoe's imagination. By focusing on the historical contexts that informed Defoe's depiction of American Indians, African slaves, and white indentured servants, Dennis Todd investigates the colonial assumptions that shaped his novels and, at the same time, uncovers how Defoe used details of the American experience in complex, often figurative ways to explore the psychological bases of the profound conversions and transformations that his heroes and heroines undergo. And by examining what Defoe knew and did not know about America, what he falsely believed and what he knowingly falsified, Defoe's America probes the doubts, hesitancies, and contradictions he had about the colonial project he so fervently promoted.

Defoe's America

J. Paul Hunter

Cynthia Wall

Associated University Presses

Professor Cynthia Wall

Paul J. Hunter

This collection of essays, including contributions by Paula Backscheider, Martin C. Battestin, and Patricia Meyer Spacks -- examines the relationships between history, literary forms, and the cultural contexts of British literature from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. Topics include print culture and the works of Mary, Lady Chudleigh; the politics of early amatory fiction; Susanna Centlivre's use of plot; novels by women between 1760 and 1788; and the connection between gender and narrative form in the criminal biographies of the 1770s.

Serious Reflections on Occasional Forms : Essays in Honor of J. Paul Hunter

Eighteenth-century Genre and Culture

In 1726, an illiterate woman from Surrey named Mary Toft announced that she had given birth to 17 rabbits. This study recreates the story of this incident and shows how it illuminates 18th-century beliefs about the power of imagination and the problems of personal identity.

Dennis Todd

Books

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