Abstract
This paper examines how three poems by Daniel Defoe— A New Discovery of an Old Intreague (1691), The True-Born Englishman (1701), and The Mock Mourners (1702)—engage with the typological difficulties attendant on Williamite panegyric. Since William’s claim to rule was so unconventional, biblical models were at once indispensable and impractical; scripture continued to provide an essential framework for conceptualizing contemporary politics, but its established affiliations with the ideology of divine right made it an unwieldy subtext. Rather than sidestep or reduce this problem, Defoe makes it the cornerstone of William’s legitimacy, figuring his exceptional authority as a function of the aesthetic and historiographic strain he imposes on panegyrical poetry.
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