Daniel Defoe, Contrarian / / Robert James Merrett.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Merrett, Robert James,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

A highly conscious wordsmith, Daniel Defoe used expository styles in his fiction and non-fiction that reflected his ability to perceive material and intellectual phenomena from opposing, but not contradictory perspectives. Moreover, the boundaries of genre within his wide-ranging oeuvre can prove highly fluid. In this study, Robert James Merrett approaches Defoe's body of work using interdisciplinary methods that recognize dialectic in his verbal creativity and cognitive awareness.Examining more than ninety of Defoe's works, Merrett contends that this author's literariness exploits a conscious dialogue that fosters the reciprocity of traditional and progressive authorial procedures. Along the way, he discusses Defoe's lexical and semantic sensibility, his rhetorical and aesthetic theories, his contrarian theology, and more. Merrett proposes that Defoe's contrarian outlook celebrates a view of consciousness that acknowledges the brain's bipartite structure, and in so doing illustrates how cognitive science may be applied to further explorations of narrative art.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter One. Contraries: Linguistic, Narrative, and Theological -- Chapter Two. Just Reflections -- Chapter Three. Serious Reflections: An Apology for Faith and Fiction -- Chapter Four. Biblical Allusions as Narrative Resources -- Chapter Five. Political Impersonations and Cultural Implications -- Chapter Six. Political Imaginings: Sacred and Profane -- Chapter Seven. Marriage and Matrimony: The Dialectic of Sex and Love -- Chapter Eight. Defoe's Imaginary: Narrative Inference, Figurative Expression, and Spiritual Cognition -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index