Dating the Devil: Daniel Defoe's Roxana and The Political History of the Devil

Abstract

In 1724 Daniel Defoe published his last novel, Roxana, and began writing works on occult, including Political History of Devil (1726), A System of Magic (1726), and An Essay on History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). Maximillian E. Novak has suggested that meager financial success of Roxana may have led Defoe to abandon (Daniel Defoe 624) and then turn his attention to answering contemporary attacks on orthodox Christianity and Bible (Defoe 94). shift from novels to treatises appears rather decisive, but critics have suggested possible links between Defoe's novels and his work on occult. In view of Richard Titlebaum, Defoe's work on demonology casts fascinating light on Defoe's fiction (6); however, he makes no mention of Roxana. In Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe's Fiction, Novak proposes that Defoe began toying with a notion in Roxana he would later develop fully in Political History--namely, means by which human beings transform themselves into devils. Even more than Defoe's previous novels, Roxana focuses on internal state of its protagonist and traces her moral decline (105, 100). David Blewett similarly claims that the attention paid to interior drama of moral deterioration distinguishes Roxana from Defoe's earlier novels, and he examines subtle means by which preys on Roxana's mind, a theme developed by Defoe in Political History (130, 139). Novak and Blewett point to a central feature of Political History--the view that hell is more an internal reality than a physical place of fire and brimstone. These readings help us interpret one of most notable junctures in Defoe's writing career; however, they suggest more than they substantiate. This essay argues that rhetorical and formal, as well as thematic, concerns link Roxana and Political History. By examining Roxana in light of Defoe's writings on occult, and vice versa, we can understand motives and methods of each text more clearly. Political History does not merely develop themes introduced in Roxana; continuation of these themes from novel to treatise indicates an inability on Defoe's part to put to rest, via medium of prose fiction, attacks by deists and freethinkers on orthodox Christian views of providential order and reality of hell, of which were foundational to Defoe's religious outlook. differences between two texts reveal serious challenges their author faced in writing about Devil in a time when a dual complication was occurring: belief in Devil was dwindling at very moment when, in Defoe's view, polite society and learning had all but allowed Devil to cease using magical methods suitable to credulous eras and to rely on normal-seeming customs and institutions of society, religion, politics, and learning to do his work for him. This situation required a risky strategy. By avoiding superstition and belief in magic that appeared in contemporary treatises on occult, and by seeking to expose normal-seeming characteristics of society as work of Devil, Defoe in his own way risked eradicating Devil. existence of Devil created controversy because believers in Defoe's lifetime considered it a crux of religious thought at same time as skeptics questioned rationality of such beliefs. While Defoe had, as Novak points out, moved far from notions of a horned and cloven-footed devil (Daniel Defoe 659), Devil was an undeniable reality for Defoe and an indispensable element in his system of belief. Writing in Political History, Defoe explains: The Truth is, God and Devil, however opposite in their nature, and remote from one another in their place of abiding, seem to stand pretty much upon a level in our faith: For as to our believing reality of their existence, he that denies one generally denies both; and he that believes one necessarily believes both (20). …