Daniel Defoe’s Moral and Rhetorical Ideas by Robert James Merrett

Abstract

Progress of Poetry,” without noting how Swift makes the very process of arguing by analogy suspect, which again further compounds the ironies. As I have said before, England thinks in two’s, as when he finds two interpre­ tations of “ Caetera desiderantur” at the end of the “Rapsody,” when at least one more is possible: that the remainder is not just lost or non-existent, but also to be desired. The method is most viable as applied to the early pindarics, but is inadequate for exposing the full satiric subtlety of most of the other poems. In his long analysis of “Cadenus and Vanessa,” England builds upon that of Gareth Jones (in Essays in Criticism, 1970). An earlier version of this analysis, first delivered as a paper at one of the Modern Language Associa­ tion’s special sessions on Swift’s poetry, is included in Contemporary Studies of Sw iffs Poetry (1981). In his introduction to the collection, John Irwin Fischer points out the strength and weakness of England’s method: Eng­ land carefully and fully studies the text as “patterned artifact,” but anything beyond the pattern, be it “authorial confusion” or “unpatterned insight,” cannot find its way into the analysis. The same neatness mars Energy and Order. England has not fully reduced the tiger of English literature to a pussycat, but he has considerably lessened the gleam in its eye. Swift would have been both delighted and appalled with this study of his energy and order — and, no doubt, with my review of it. a n n m e s s e n g e r / Simon Fraser University Robert James Merrett, Daniel Defoe’s Moral and Rhetorical Ideas, ELS Monograph Series, No. 19 (Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, 1980). 112. $4.25 Defoe’s novels are not illustrations. He is careful to point out the moral, insistent in his claim to be instructing the reader, but in fact the insistence is quite bogus. There is no ‘moral discovery’ to be made in Moll Flanders for all the moral talk. It seems many years since these words were written. Actually it was only thirty years ago, and the author was no less a person than Arnold Kettle, in his Introduction to the English Novel. Since then Kettle has somewhat moderated his views on Moll Flanders, but in the meantime a series of important books on Defoe have made it impossible to return to the older view. Maximilian Novak in Defoe and the Nature of Man (1963), G. A. Starr in Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (1965) and Defoe and Casuistry (19 71), J- Paul Hunter in The Reluctant Pilgrim (1966) and Michael 229 Shinagel in Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility (1968) have made us aware of the importance of contemporary philosophy, religion and economics in understanding Defoe’s thought and literary method. It is in this tradition that we must view R. J. Merrett’s monograph. The new area which he has marked out for himself is Defoe’s rhetorical ideas: his method is much like that of his predecessors, i.e., to examine carefully Defoe’s non-fictional writ­ ing and his minor fiction for indications as to his views, which can then be applied to the major fiction. Merrett draws upon a wide range of Defoe’s writings, including journalism, political tracts, biographies, and such miscel­ laneous works as Conjugal Lewdness, The Political History of the Devil, and the Serious Reflections During the Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, in order to report on a wide range of Defoe’s opinions. Thus in his first chapter, “ Defoe and Religious Sense,” Merrett attempts to define De­ foe’s views on religion by describing his attitudes toward contemporary think­ ers as diverse as Bacon, Descartes, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes, John Toland , and the Earl of Shaftesbury. Merrett’s thesis is that Defoe is not primarily a systematic thinker, but rather a rhetorician, in the sense that his writings are always aimed to persuade a real audience of whom Defoe is keenly aware. Consequently, Defoe is not primarily concerned with consis­ tency of thought, but with his own image as a speaker, and with his audi­ ence’s presuppositions...