Defoe as a Biographical Subject : Literature Compass

18th Century

Defoe as a Biographical Subject

By Max Novak, University of California, Los Angeles (September 2006)

Sections: 18th Century

Subjects: Literature, Eighteenth Century Literature.

People: Defoe, Daniel.

Periods: 1000 - 1999, 1700-1799.

Key Topics: biography, lifewriting.

Abstract

This essay on writing a biography of Daniel Defoe is focused on two problems. How is biography possible in a time when many thinkers have argued that all history and biography are essentially forms of fiction and that the notion of a unified personality is an illusion? And how does one deal with the contention of John Richetti and others that a biography of Daniel Defoe has to be different from other biographies in that his character is essentially irretrievable from the past? The arguments of various critics on authorship have shown us that works of history and biography are never scientific presentations but rather works shaped by their authors. But it is only through such limited viewpoints that facts of a life or a history can have meaning. Defoe was a spy who took many identities, but placed in a determinable historical context, his opinions and motives are fairly consistent. As the many biographers of Defoe before me and I have shown, shaping the life and character of such a protean figure is challenging but is not as difficult as might be thought.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00377.x

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