Transformations of the Supernatural: Problems of Representation in the Work of Daniel Defoe 9783839437759

Table of contents :
Contents
1. Introduction
Part I: Daniel Defoe’s Supernaturalism Revisited: Judgment and the Burden of Proof
2. Daniel Defoe’s Supernatural Tracts and Contemporary Supernaturalism: Problems of Language and Evidence
Part II: Transformations of the Supernatural: The Power of the Imagination
3. Defoe’s Play with the “As If”: Fiction, Delusion and Imagination
4. Describing Emotional Conflict and Continuity in Defoe’s Narratives Journal of the Plague Year, Robinson Crusoe and Roxana
Part III: Singular Experience and Collective Knowledge
5. Frames of Knowledge in Daniel Defoe’s Story-Telling
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography

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Petra Schoenenberger Transformations of the Supernatural

Lettre

Für meine Familie

Petra Schoenenberger

Transformations of the Supernatural Problems of Representation in the Work of Daniel Defoe

»Transformations of the Supernatural: Problems of Representation in the Work of Daniel Defoe« is based on the doctoral dissertation »Certainty and Confusion: A Study of Daniel Defoe’s Narrative Psychology«. This thesis was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich in the spring semester 2014 on the recommendation of Professor Dr. Allen Reddick and Professor Dr. Fritz Gutbrodt.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2017 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: glückimwinkel / photocase.de Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3775-5 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3775-9

Contents

1 Introduction | 7

1.1 Transforming Supernaturalism | 7 1.2 Contextualising Daniel Defoe’s Work on the Supernatural | 10 1.3 Jane Wenham: A Case in Point | 13 1.4 Defoe’s Supernatural Tracts | 16 1.5 How to Qualify the “Supernatural” | 20 1.6 Seeking Certainty of Self | 26 1.7 Chapter Overview | 31

P ART I: DANIEL DEFOE’ S S UPERNATURALISM REVISITED: J UDGMENT AND THE BURDEN OF P ROOF 2 Daniel Defoe’s Supernatural Tracts and Contemporary Supernaturalism: Problems of Language and Evidence | 37 2.1 Introduction | 38 2.2 The Idea of Being Able to Study the Supernatural | 41 2.3 Analysing the Supernatural | 45 2.4 Disengagement from Demonological Debates | 49 2.5 The Question of Evidence | 53 2.6 Defoe’s Treatment of Evidence of the Supernatural | 58 2.7 Defoe’s Lines of Argumentation in his Supernatural Tracts | 64 2.8 Summary | 68

P ART II: TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE S UPERNATURAL: P ROPHECY AND DELUSION 3 Defoe’s Play with the “As If”: Fiction, Delusion and Imagination | 71 3.1 Introduction | 72 3.2 Disruptive Imagination | 76 3.3 Imagination and Uncertainty | 83

3.4 “Deluded” Imagination | 88 3.5 Error or Delusion? Discrediting Testimonies | 94 3.6 Delusion as a Motif | 99

4 Describing Emotional Conflict and Continuity of Experience in Defoe’s Narratives Journal of the Plague Year, Robinson Crusoe and Roxana | 107 4.1 Introduction | 107

4.2 Transformations of the Prophetic Voice: The Case of Robinson Crusoe | 110 4.3 Transformations of the Magical: The Case of Fear in A Journal of the Plague Year | 117 4.4 Transformations of the Demonic: The Case of Roxana; or, The Fortunate Mistress | 122 4.5 Summary | 130

P ART III: S INGULAR EXPERIENCE AND COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE 5 Frames of Knowledge in Daniel Defoe’s Story-Telling | 133

5.1 Introduction | 133 5.2 Offering an Aetiological Myth of Knowledge | 136 5.3 Dialogic Stories | 140 5.4 Fact and Fiction: Embedded Story-Telling in A Journal of the Plague Year | 145 5.5 The Failure of Dialogic Interaction | 161 5.6 Enacting Knowledge: Self-Fashioning in Roxana | 164 5.7 Summary | 170 6 Conclusion | 173 7 Bibliography | 1779 7.1 Primary Literature | 179 7.2 Secondary Literature | 186

1 Introduction How to bring the World to a right Temper between these Extreams is a Difficulty we cannot answer for; but if setting things in a true light, between Imagination and solid Foundation, will assist towards it, we hope this Work may have some Success DANIEL DEFOE, ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF APPARITIONS, PREFACE, 39.

1.1 T RANSFORMING S UPERNATURALISM Late in his career, Daniel Defoe renews an earlier interest of his in the supernatural. From 1726 till 1727, he writes three treatises, The Political History of the Devil, A System of Magick, and An Essay on the History of Apparitions. Defoe’s tracts are part of a distinguishable popular genre, which effectively brings together popular beliefs in an invisible world of spirits with speculative and empirical philosophy. Properly called “supernaturalism” for its selfconception as the possible application of natural science beyond the immediately physical, or “super naturam”, it turns out to be a thought experiment for empirical theories, which intrigues Defoe and his predecessors. Arguably, supernaturalist tracts constitute a sub-genre of general popular writings on occult practices and phenomena, such as divination, astrology, magic, prophecy, apparitions, haunting, palmistry, cunning men, and witchcraft. The reader of such sensational popular literature is meant to sympathise with the victim in cases of alleged witchcraft, or to feel fear of supposed encounters with the demonic. Recounting incidents and testimonials of victims and witnesses, the tracts bear all the marks of a “human interest” story. In fact, many of the more academic tracts on the supernatural are similarly organised around particular cases. But by contrast to sensational tales of apparitions, seventeenth-century

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academic and philosophical writers discuss the evidence, and in the case of witchcraft, the subsequent trials, with the intention of determining the nature and admissibility of the evidence. The attention of the reader is directed to the evidence of the particular case, legal as well as empirical, to be then drawn into a discussion of reliability and justified doubt. The interest in the materiality of possible supernatural phenomena is furthermore a result of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Lorraine Daston argues that the interest in the supernatural triggers important innovations in the methodology of empiricism: wonder at an incident is elicited by its falling outside the usual paradigms of explanation (cf. discussion in chapter one). Many seventeenth-century writers were members of the Royal Society, such as Joseph Glanvill, or advocates of the new experimental sciences, as proposed by Sir Francis Bacon. These writers essentially established a discourse on the supernatural, which differs from its popular counterpart of miracle pamphlets and astrological predictions. The discourse on the supernatural as inspired by the scientific revolution only briefly surfaces in the late seventeenth century, particularly in the Glanvill-Webster debate (discussed below). This so-called supernaturalism drew its life from the confrontation of empiricism with spirituality, on the one hand, and scepticism, on the other hand. Engaging with the subject of supernatural phenomena allows the authors to maintain or dismiss a range of sceptical tenets, while at the same time defending the empirical idea of knowledge as a direct correspondence between perception, external object and internal image. Some writers are openly sceptical of alleged supernatural phenomena, as for instance Reginald Scot and John Webster. Others argue that precisely because one has to doubt human perception of presumably supernatural phenomena, one has to acknowledge the possibility of such phenomena. In 1715, Francis Hutchinson wrote An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft. Hutchinson addresses the fact that despite all the literature explaining witchcraft charges as the result of the accusers’ “melancholic imaginations”, people still read the books by Joseph Glanvill, Richard Baxter and Henry More: “These Books and Narratives are in Tradesmen’s Shops, and Farmer’s Houses, and are read with great Eagerness, and are continually levening the Minds of the Youth, who delight in such Subjects; and considering what sore Evils these Notions bring when they prevail, I hope no Man will think but that they must still be combated, oppos’d, and kept down” (Hutchinson, “Dedication”, p. 14). What Hutchinson alludes to is the stratification of the readership by age and social status, implying a social devaluation of the works of Glanvill, Henry More and Richard Baxter, and thus calling into doubt the authority of their claims.

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In his tracts, Defoe offers a synthesis of seventeenth-century views. He takes up the sceptical challenge of his predecessors’ tracts by focussing on the certainty of knowledge. Moreover, the debate on the plausibility of supernatural phenomena is, among other things, a discussion of probability and validity of evidence. As with his predecessors, so-called supernatural phenomena are worth the attention because they raise a series of questions about epistemology and about the human mind. Studying Defoe’s fictions in the context of his late supernatural tracts, one detects a complex relationship between contemporary ideas about knowledge and the supernatural, analytic discourse and the subjective singularity of individual experience represented in novelistic narratives. Finding language appropriate to describe the experience of the supernatural provides Defoe with a vocabulary to render emotive and cognitive moments of crisis. Doubt becomes “confusion”. This is one way for the faithful to understand his or her own scepticism. Confusion, moreover, is the symptom of the condition. Daniel Defoe’s work describes a variety of “symptoms” in an attempt to come to terms with the contrast between the individual’s own singular experience and the desired security of the certain objective statement. Certainty about one’s knowledge and beliefs is prerequisite to any meaningful statement. Confusion, on the other hand, may result from deception, error, misinformation or bad judgment. Defoe’s narratives effectively transform supernaturalism. In his fictions, hypothesis, anticipation and manipulative deception are metaphorically recast as prophecy and supernatural inspiration. Furthermore, prophecy is one of Defoe’s main structuring plot devices. In addition, the verbal gesture to the supernatural realm provides the emotional language of moments of confusion. Confusion is a rough term that encompasses a series of cognitive and emotional moments characterising the experience of difficult situations and conflicts. It describes the disruption, the speechlessness, surprise and the fear that Defoe’s protagonists often experience. How to describe this confusion, how to reestablish certainty, and how to ensure the continuity of experience are the transformations of the supernatural studied in this dissertation. Arguably, since Defoe’s engagement with supernaturalist themes comprises cognitive as well as emotional aspects of the self, it helps crystallize what might be called Defoe’s narrative psychology.

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1.2 C ONTEXTUALISING D ANIEL D EFOE ’ S W ORK ON THE S UPERNATURAL Earlier texts on the supernatural debate conceptual differences, which point to the changes in scientific paradigms occurring in the seventeenth century. Faith in reason and rational argument is contrasted with empirical evidence. The validity and scope of empirical evidence is as much contested as is the reliance on the testimony of individual witnesses. The individual witness is under scrutiny for the intactness of his cognitive and mental abilities, even if a psychiatric concept of mental illness is yet to be defined. If science could prove religion, supernaturalism might well provide the solution. Supernaturalism is only a cover term but the texts will in fact share the common characteristic that they border on theological or ontological topics without offering explanations typical of those disciplines. The supernaturalism of the late 17th and early 18th century must be read as part of the ongoing paradigmatic changes in the discourses of science, philosophy and theology. Scientifically, supernaturalism is discussed from two different points of view. On the one hand, philosophers like Joseph Glanvill and scientists like Isaac Newton propose a theory of the universe that will appropriate supernaturalist views – such as a belief in prophecy – as part of the larger system. Someone like John Webster, on the other hand, defends a Paracelsian position understanding nature in terms of a mystical chemistry. The synthesis of the two views is one of the achievements of the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the supernatural tracts of the period, from roughly 1660 to 1730, are to a large extent a direct response to the materialism of Thomas Hobbes and the deism of the younger generation of John Toland and Anthony Collins. While Defoe seems to attempt to reach a synthesis between reasonable but not radical Christianity and the mystery of revelation, his negotiation of terms such as orthodoxy and enthusiasm shows that in his eyes the conflict is far from resolved. It is evident from contemporary tracts on the supernatural that the genre slowly becomes a means to begin a discourse on faith, reason and the supernatural (notably, including both the angelic and demonic supernatural). Even though Providence and determinism are major issues, the supernaturalist genre does not provide arguments concerning Grace and other topics of fundamental theology, nor does it make a theological statement on sin. Yet, there is hardly a theological or philosophical text of the 17th century that does not in some way or other make a statement on the supernatural order of beings. However, the concept of the Great Chain of Beings, the idea that there is a realm of spirits that plausibly share the same essence as our souls, and the absolute

I NTRODUCTION | 11

trust in Divine Providence, while present in the supernaturalist treatises, are not the subject matter of these treatises. Writers of supernatural treatises invariably face a double epistemological quandary. First, the supernatural is arguably beyond the knowable. For seventeenth-century philosophers like John Locke the inability to gain knowledge on the supernatural does not in fact prove it does not exist, since existence is not determined by our conception. Not all writers on the supernatural share this view. They would argue that evidence for supernatural occurrences is available. With this assertion, they also deny a fundamental dichotomy of faith and knowledge. Second, the collectors of reports of supernatural and preternatural phenomena face yet another epistemological problem, which concerns the reliability and credibility of such reports. The most frequent reproaches against the so-called evidence in the form of stories are accusations of deceit and tricking, as well as delusion and error, on the part of either the reporter or the witness. Part of the rationale of believers in apparition stories is to argue that if we accept that our ideas about the world are based on how things appear to us and are then re-presented and processed in our minds, then how can we possibly be sure that there may not be apparitions of a more extraordinary kind. Thus, it is the fascination with what is and might be possible, with what may be imagined and what is imaginable, that drives the supernaturalism as it is encountered in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century intellectual discourse on the supernatural. All the tracts are characterised by the fact that they are self-reflexive in that they devote some space and attention to their own motivation, intention, method and material. Indeed, it is their contemplation of both method and material that distinguishes them from the extant seventeenth- and eighteenth- century pamphlet literature on miracles, ghosts and apparitions. The question whether supernatural phenomena, both angelic and demonic, are possible, is frequently tied to the possibility of witchcraft. “Real” witchcraft would presuppose the possibility of a direct interaction between a human being and a demonic entity, thus breaching the physics of matter and substance. For the purpose of this discussion, the following selection of treatises on the supernatural is considered: Anonymous, A Full Confutation of Witchcraft. London, 1712. And: The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft Consider’d. Being an Examination of a Book entitl’d , A Full and Impartial Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft. London, 1712. John Aubrey, Miscellanies, London, 1721. Francis Bragge, A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, London, 1712. Samuel Clarke, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; wherein all

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the arguments in his Epistolary Discourse against the immortality of the soul are particularly answered… London, 1706. Daniel Defoe, Mrs Veal, 1705, and History of Apparitions, and The Political History of the Devil, and System of Magick. George Gifford, A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraftes. In which is laide open how craftely the Divell deceiveth not onely the Witches but many other and so leadeth them awrie into many great errours. London, 1593. Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica: Or, Confest Ignorance, the way to Science; In an Essay of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, and Confident Opinion. With a Reply to the Exceptions Of the Learned Thomas Albius. London, 1665, and A Blow at Modern Sadducism. In some Philosophical Considerations About Witchcraft And the Relation of the Famed Disturbance at the House of M. Mompesson. With Reflections on Drollery and Atheisme. The Fourth Edition Corrected and Inlarged. London, 1668, and Sadducism Triumphatus. London, 1726. Francis Hutchinson, An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft. London, 1718. Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft, 1665. John Trenchard, A Natural History of Superstition. John Webster, The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft. London, 1678. As these tracts influence Defoe’s thought on the supernatural, we will discuss the various concepts of imagination, knowledge and delusion in context of Joseph Glanvill’s, John Webster’s, Locke’s, George Gifford’s and Francis Hutchinson’s tracts. Defoe’s relationship to the 17th-century philosopher Joseph Glanvill is important. It has been pointed out (McKeon, 1987) that Defoe is indebted to Glanvill. Glanvill is the central figure in this discussion because Defoe refers to him as a source. Moreover, Glanvill’s contribution Sadducism Triumphatus must be considered in the context of the controversy between Glanvill and Webster.1 Defoe not only criticises some aspects of Glanvill’s thought, he also offers a synthesis of the debate between the two. Still, like Glanvill, Defoe is committed to countering heterodox religious views, which he perhaps addresses most clearly in HD, where he reads Paradise Lost as the work of an anti-Trinitarian and responds to it as if it were an exposition of an anti-Trinitarian cosmology. Glanvill in turn identifies heterodox views with atheism and scepticism. While Glanvill in fact adopts the Cartesian sceptical method, he attacks the Pyrrhonic scepticism that was revived in the Renaissance and still important in the 17th century. Similarly, what Glanvill considers atheism seems nearly synonymous with the Epicureanism of Thomas

1

Burns, William E. Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) DNB. Jobe, Th. H. describes John Webster (1610-1682) as a “radical Protestant, chemical physician, and visionary Baconian” (ISIS 1981: 72 (263), 343).

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Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi. Again, Defoe appears to follow suit when asserting scriptural truth, and adopting a Newtonian view of the world.

1.3 J ANE W ENHAM : A C ASE

IN

P OINT

A good example of how popular perception of the supernatural comes into contact with the academic discourse on the supernatural is the historical case of Jane Wenham.2 It demonstrates how the 17th-century academic discourse has outlived itself by 1712, when Jane Wenham of Walkerne in Hertfordshire was sentenced to death for felony and witchcraft. First of all, even though Jane Wenham was found guilty, she was later acquitted on a Royal Pardon apparently obtained by Judge Powell who had been sitting her case at the assizes. Secondly, after the court sessions, the case was debated in pamphlets in 1712. It is in fact the last instance of a witchcraft trial in England in which the defendant was sentenced to death. Furthermore, it created a public polemic with two major participants, Francis Bragge and a physician of Hertfordshire who remains anonymous. Reading the original tracts by Bragge and the physician engaged in the immediate debate on the 1712 Jane Wenham case, one notes that both sides work with the major arguments and problems that are cited by the philosophers and theologians writing on the supernatural.3 Both polemicists clearly affiliate themselves to one of the two camps, defending or opposing the possibility of witchcraft. Thus, they debate testimony and reliability, the nature of evil, and certainty and truth, while

2

Until Mark Knights’ recent publication, the case of Jane Wenham has received little attention. In The Devil in Disguise, Mark Knights discusses Hertford history, focussing on three main events, the trial of Spencer Cowper of the Hertford Cowpers, the Sacheverell controversy (in which the Cowper family was involved) and the trial of Jane Wenham. Knight contends the exemplary nature of these events to elucidate the “revolutionary changes” of the Early Enlightenment

(2011: 2). The present

discussion is based on the anonymous tracts A Full Confutation of Witchcraft, 1712, and The Case of the Hertfordshire Witchcraft considered, 1712, as well as on Francis Bragge’s replies (cited below). 3

Cf. Bragge, Francis. A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Practis’d by Jane Wenham of Walkerne in Hertfordshire, upon the Bodies of Anne Thorn, Anne Street. London 1712. BOD Gough Herts 10 (6); and A Full Confutation of Witchcraft. London, 1712. BOD Gough Herts 10 (6).

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relying on competing explanations. In the shortest common denominator it is madness or melancholy versus devil. Jane Wenham was accused of witchcraft and felony and sent to the assizes by Sir Henry Chauncy, who first heard the case. The key witnesses were Mrs Gardiner and Reverend Gardiner, Francis Bragge (the father of the Francis Bragge above), Matthew Gilston, servant of one John Chapman, neighbour of the Gardiner family; Reverend Strutt (who made Jane say the Lord’s Prayer); and Susan Aylott, who lost her child, claiming that Jane Wenham had bewitched the child. There are six pamphlets relating to this case. Francis Bragge wrote three tracts in favour of the Jury’s ruling that Jane Wenham was guilty. An anonymous writer, known as the “physician of Hertfordshire”, wrote to show that Jane Wenham must be innocent because there is no such thing as witchcraft. Indeed, one of the physician’s tracts aims only to show how erroneous Francis Bragge’s opinions were. Joseph Glanvill’s role in this kind of controversy becomes apparent, by the way in which Francis Bragge uses Glanvill’s writings to justify the belief in witchcraft: But being informed, that the Incredulity of the Judge, together with the great Proneness of the Age to Sadducees and Incredulity, had caused many Objections to be rais’d against that faithful and impartial Relation of Matter of Fact, I thought my self obliged, for my own Vindication, and that of the Persons principally concern’s in the Prosecution, not to remain silent, when I had so much to urge in my Defence. […] Having also, upon reading Mr. Glanvill’s Book, met with an Instance of a Discovery of Witchcraft, almost in every Circumstance agreeing with our Case, I thought my self obliged to insert it with Observations upon those parts of it which so nearly our particular Case, that the one seems to be a Copy of the other. (Witchcraft farther display’d, “Introduction”, p. 1, my emphases in underscoring)

The anonymous physician on the other hand observes: [There] are those who look upon the Being of Witches of such Concernment in Religion, that whatsoever has any tendency to destroy the belief of that must of necessity weaken the other. [He then summarizes] That the Existence as well of Spirits in general, as of Evil Spirits in particular, being of such Importance to be believed, and Witchcraft being as they suppose so evident and sensible a Demonstration of both, it seems that any Attempts made against the Latter is endeavouring to rob Religion of one considerable Guard which should secure it against the Attempts of prophane and licentious Men. This they will tell us is of the Outworks of our Faith, and that when once a Breach is made here, Religion will lose

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round apace and Atheism come on by larger Strides: That when once Men come to deny there are Spirits or Witches, it is a fair Step and Introduction to say, there is no God. (The Case of the Hertfordshire witchcraft consider’d, “The Preface”, pp. 4, 5)

Even though he argues that he is not attacking Glanvill’s reasoning directly, he is in fact doing more than that. He questions whether this line of argument is at all justified. So, before entering into a debate of the single premises and so-called known facts, he dismisses the entire question, so that he can say: I deny neither the Being of Spirits nor the Being of Witches, but will allow both the one and the other all the Credit and Authority they can reasonably pretend to. But then, I desire to be excused, if I cannot give my assent to every idle Story, and believe that to be an instance of Witchcraft, which whimsical and credulous people shall affirm to be such. (The Case of the Hertfordshire witchcraft consider’d, “The Preface”, p. 5)

As a speech act these last two sentences signal that the physician wants to avoid drawing any suspicion of being an atheist, since it would actually hurt his own argument if he came across as a zealot for his cause, and since it might make people dismiss what he has to say. Secondly, the first sentence “I deny neither the Being of Spirits nor the Being of Witches, but will allow both the one and the other all the Credit and Authority they can reasonably pretend to” is really not saying anything, since he does not commit to either opinion. What is noteworthy, moreover, is that in this short quotation the imagination is not a positive entity. After all, in the physician’s view, both acting on a whim and believing anything is due to an overactive imagination. And here, too, the imagination is the source of error. But other than Glanvill’s, the physician’s notion of the imagination lays the blame strictly with human nature and perhaps disease, not with the supernatural. Indeed, he effectively says that only overimaginative, or else mad people believe that there are witches. In this, his argument bears a certain resemblance to Reginald Scot’s sceptical account, in which he explains not so much the accusers’ but the defendants’ belief that they are witches with melancholy, which induces delusions. But of course, the physician cannot leave it at philosophical speculation or at old case stories, since he is answering a real case. To the physician in Hertfordshire it is clear that Ann Thorn suffers from a severe mental disorder, and he argues that she was suffering from an epileptic fit which Ann Thorn herself described as a “roaming in the head” and which he translates as “giddiness”. The physician combines a kind of linguistic analysis, that is, he analyses the language and asks what the witnesses really mean by that,

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with an analysis of the arguments brought forth to interpret the so-called evidence, all the while having to fend off the reproach of being an atheist.

1.4 D EFOE ’ S S UPERNATURAL T RACTS Let us turn to Daniel Defoe’s so-called supernatural tracts. Defoe clearly believed in the reality of a spiritual realm (cf. Baine, 1968; Katherine Clark, 2007; Starr, 2003, 2005). Moreover, he believed in the work of Providence in the life of every man and woman (cf. Hunter, 1966; Novak, 1963; Rosen, 2001; Starr, 1965; Zimmerman, 1975). However, the stories of supernatural encounters such as apparitions centre on the isolated perspective of the individual claiming to have had such an experience. The voice of the author is in dialogue with the story, which is to be assessed and either confirmed or dismissed. The singularity of the experience forces the reader to confront the question of human judgment in the face of a possibly delusional, and certainly singular, event. As an author, Defoe distances himself from his material by underlining the satirical implications of his tracts. Still, Defoe is both interested in the material for its own sake, and for its satirical uses as a vehicle to expose human and social follies. A System of Magick is Defoe’s second treatise published in 1727. It exhibits a strongly historical, as well as anthropological, view of religion and its relationship to science; and in doing so, it reflects on the paradigmatic changes informing seventeenth-century science and philosophy. An Essay on the History of Apparitions (1727), Defoe’s last supernatural tract, is more concerned with whether or not men are able to judge and be certain about such matters as cannot be known by empirical methods. It deals with one of the key issues in the discourse on the supernatural, where philosophers and polemicists tried to find empirical evidence for the supernatural. Defoe seems to go a step further in A System of Magick by suggesting that the magic of old was really science, thus elevating the pursuit of knowledge to a quasi-spiritual status. History of Apparitions was first published in 1727 with J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane. The first octavo edition was illustrated with several plates. Its title-page was printed in red and black ink, imitating the 1726 edition of Joseph Glanvill’s Sadducism Triumphatus, the title-page of which is also in red and black ink. As already pointed out, Glanvill is a key figure as one of the seventeenth-century defenders of witchcraft beliefs. His argument for the reality of witchcraft is in apparent contrast with his argument against dogmatic philosophy. This contrast creates problems of interpretation to the modern

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reader, as Glanvill’s use of a sceptical method is difficult to reconcile with his willingness to defend ghost stories and witch hunts unreservedly. However, Glanvill’s Sadducism should be read and understood in the context of Henry More’s Neo-Platonism. History of Apparitions is equally imitation and parody of Sadducism Triumphatus. Defoe’s satiric appropriation of Glanvill’s tract is visible already by a comparison of the title pages. Both title pages exhibit similar typographical features, including the use of capitalised words and alignment of single words and the double-ruled frame of the entire page. The imitative and satirical quality becomes more pronounced when one realises that Defoe’s text was also published under his pseudonym Andrew Moreton in 1727 and 1728. These two editions do not actually include the title History of Apparitions, but they contain the same illustrations and, above all, the actual text is virtually the same.4 Defoe used the pseudonym of Andrew Moreton, according to Max Novak, when he wanted to adopt the guise of the disgruntled elderly gentleman who has to teach mankind a lesson. A Political History of the Devil was one of Defoe’s more successful works, going into several editions. The success was posthumous, as Defoe died in 1731. In contrast to History of Apparitions, the History of the Devil was first published in octavo in 1726, but then republished as duodecimo. As Marie Hamilton Law argues in 1925, Charles Dickens was aware of The History of the Devil when he wrote Oliver Twist (PMLA 40: 4, 892ff.). Similarly, George Eliot uses History of the Devil in her novel The Mill on the Floss. This suggests that Defoe’s use of the demonic and supernatural, especially of apparitions, attained literary influence. Recently, two editions of The History of the Devil make the text available to a larger audience again.5 In his introduction to the more recent publication of History of the Devil, John Mullan proposes to consider History of the Devil, System of Magic and Essay on Apparitions as a “coherent body of work” and suggests that the latter two are sequels of the History of the Devil (1f.). Evidently, Mullan is correct with his claim that the three texts ought to be seen in relation to each other. Indeed, it makes sense to view the three together, since they each treat different aspects of the same problem. The Political History of the Devil is, as indicated by the title, not only a political satire but also a demonological tract. A System of Magick historicizes the supernaturalist discourse and History of Apparitions exposes the vagaries of unquestioning faith. 4

Cf. Title page. ESTC T070845.

5

In 2003, Irving Rothman and Michael Bowerman edited the tract for “The Stoke Newtington Daniel Defoe Edition”.

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Revisiting Defoe’s narrative fictions, one can contextualise the three tracts with the fictions. In fact, the tracts can provide a meta-fictional commentary. What Defoe thought about the devil is of some concern in critics’ readings of Robinson Crusoe and Roxana.6 Moreover, as the tracts deal with questions of epistemology, this body of works is meta-discursive in relation to the seventeenth-century discourse on the supernatural. If however the aim were to address Defoe’s supernaturalism notwithstanding its relationship to earlier debates, there are more works to be taken into consideration, such as Defoe’s “Meditations” (a set of poems he wrote as a young man, made available by Healey’s edition), “The Angelick Vision of Robinson Crusoe”, “The Storm”, and “Mrs Veal”.7 The result of such a study would not only be to trace Defoe’s thought on the subject matter, as has been done by Rodney Baine in 1968, but also to combine what might be called the religious dimension of Defoe’s work with ontological questions asking for the role and significance of the definition of substance, matter and spirit in Defoe’s work. However, such a project was not envisaged here, since Defoe is not especially interested in the theoretical aspects of philosophical questions. Ilse Vickers has similarly noted Defoe’s disinterest in theory in his work in her study of Defoe’s relationship with the New Sciences (1996). Apart from the problem of Defoe’s supernaturalism, and apart from the problem of meta-discursive and meta-fictional contextualisation, yet another question is the polemical nature of each tract taken on its own. Again, the tracts point to each other. The frontispiece of The History of the Devil shows the Roman Catholic pope surrounded by prelates in the background, and a Turkish male figure in the company of a lady in the foreground. A classical arch separates the two groups spatially. By her proximity to the Turkish figure, the female figure seems to belong to the world of Roxana. Certainly, the illustration is an intertextual comment on the topics of The History.8 The frontispiece imagines a classical space combining symbols of suspicious nature. An already alien religion is paired with the exotic foreign of yet another religion, and with a sexually charged figure suggesting immorality and disloyalty. Given this triangle 6

Brett McInelly and David Paxman discuss the biblical imagery in Roxana, and focus on the figure of the devil in particular. See Brett C. McInelly and David Paxman. “Dating the Devil: Daniel Defoe’s Roxana and The Political History of the Devil.” 2004, 435-454; and Albert J. Rivero, “The Restored Garden and the Devil as Christ: Defoe’s Inversion of Biblical Images of Salvation in Roxana.” 285-291.)

7

Defoe’s authorship of The Apparition of Mrs Veal has been contested (cf. G. A. Starr, 2003).

8

Cf. Büttner and Gottdang, 2009: 244-5.

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of suspect allegorical symbolism, the illustration also indicates a satirical verve of the tracts that goes beyond the history of religion and epistemological problems, and suggests a direct satirical engagement with the weakness of human nature and the shortcomings of religious institutions. Defoe’s quarrel is not with the Roman Catholic church exclusively, but with church establishment: “I may examine … who has the best claim to his brotherhood, the Papists or the Protestants, and among the latter the Lutherans or the Calvinists, and so descending to all the severall denominations of churches, see who has less of the Devil in them, and who more (2003: 37, sic). The preoccupation with established religion is echoed in Robinson Crusoe, when Friday describes his native religion to Robinson, and Robinson observes that even among “primitive” societies there is “priesthood”. Similarly, A System of Magick looks back to ancient religions. While it celebrates Christianity as the final consequence of a teleological view of the history of religion, it shares a negative assessment of all forms of religion as institutional. Defoe’s rejection of church hierarchies in these tracts can be read as a tribute to his dissenting background. It moreover develops the theme of personal responsibility, according to which the individual is accountable in religious beliefs as much as in political convictions, further highlighting the relevance of independent judgment. Yet, once it is termed “singular”, independence of judgment is an ambivalent proposition. The singular describes the subjectivity of individual experience, but it also refers to the isolation of the self. In the “Preface to the Second Edition” of History of the Devil Defoe states that “the subject is singular, and it has been handled after a singular Manner” and prides himself with the approval of the “wise world” and the recognition from the “merry world”. He also claims that this “singular” approach has taught the ignorant and “offended” the “malicious part” (2005: 29). At first glance, claiming “singularity” seems to be Defoe’s way to stress the originality of his work. According to the theologian George Stubbes9, writing almost contemporaneously in 1721, singularity results from a person’s willingness to rely on his or her own “observation” to an extent as to reach an opinion that is not shared by anyone else. Stubbes considers “singular knowledge” unreliable and calls it presumption to place any confidence in it (89). It is inconceivable that Defoe is not aware of the double meaning of 9

Stubbes, George. A constant Search after Truth, the necessary Result of a Trust in God: And a Neglect of a free uninterrupted Enquiry into Religion, the Effect of Presumption. A Sermon Preach’d before the University of Oxford, December 21. 1721. With a Prefatory Epistle to the Vice-Chancellor. By George Stubbes. London: Printed by W. Wilkins, and sold by J. Peele, 1722.

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“singular” as either original or unreliable. After all, he might have used the word “original” and he needn’t have repeated the word “singular”. In 1824, James Hogg uses the word “singular” as a catchphrase in his marvellous tale of demonic possession and strange doublings. In this context, “singular” designates the sceptic nature of his narrator’s voice: “I have now the pleasure of presenting my readers with an original document of a most singular nature, and preserved for their perusal in a still more singular manner. I offer no remarks on it… leaving every one to judge for himself” (The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 106). In Hogg’s tale, then, where the marvellous is held in check by the rational, the word singular appeals to the reader’s appreciation of the strangeness and improbability of the story. Likewise, Defoe’s usage of the word suggests an ironic retreat from the supernatural subject matter and especially from his own claim about the approval and recognition of the “world”. In addition, it makes clear that History of the Devil is first of all a satire rather than a treatise on the devil. Defoe’s supernatural tracts may be read as practical application of the scientific paradigms such as were available to him. He consistently historicizes the phenomena he describes. If possible, he provides direct observation. If direct observation is not possible, he collects stories of witnesses and assesses the validity of those tales. The result is a mixture of formal historical treatise, scriptural exegesis, meta-fictional commentary, as well as narrative sequences, which include dialogues and relatively melodramatic incidents that qualify as “wonderful” or “strange”. Thus, the supernatural tracts fit the bill of the satiric form. Moreover, in a properly satiric attitude, the narrators of the tracts never tire to point out the value of common sense and the ignorant superstitious credulity of victims of frauds.

1.5 Q UALIFYING THE “S UPERNATURAL ” Emile Durkheim defines the supernatural in order to approach the concept of the religious, basically arguing that the two ideas are often confused but need to be separated. Durkheim explains that “in order to think of the idea of the supernatural it is not enough to witness unexpected events; these events must also be perceived as impossible, that is, as irreconcilable with such an order as appears to us, rightly or no, as the order of things” (50). Furthermore, Durkheim notes that the idea of the supernatural is a fairly modern one and presupposes the idea of nature. In his words,

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religious concepts do not above all serve to explain and express what is the exception and abnormality of the order of the world, but on the contrary what is continuous and regular. To put it in basic terms: The gods serve much less to account for the monstrosities, the extraordinary and the anomalies, but rather to account for the common course of the universe, the movements of the stars, the rhythms of the seasons, the yearly growth of plants and so on. It is not true then that the concept of the religious is the same as the concepts of the extraordinary and the unforeseen. (50, my translation)

As a branch of physico-theology, supernaturalism – especially when dealing with natural magic – actually tries to accommodate what is extraordinary or anomalous into the frame of nature. It questions our perception of the order of things. With its interest in the particular case, it moreover challenges the validity of universalist systems, in which the seemingly impossible gains undue significance. The “extraordinary” and the “unforeseen” are the subject matter of the supernaturalists, but ultimately, their aim must be to reconcile religion to known cosmology. Similarly, in his fictions, Defoe chooses extraordinary individuals to recount their adventures, but, with ideas of knowledge, understanding and selfhood in mind, his protagonists in fact integrate the unforeseen and strange into their experience in order to provide a conceivable frame of shared identity. By contrast, in his seminal study Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas argues that the social, economic and technological developments of the late seventeenth century provided alternatives to a supernatural understanding of the world. Misfortunes and natural disasters needed no longer be explained by the presence of ghosts, magic or witchcraft. Furthermore, the loss of control experienced in such circumstances could be alleviated by recourse to new institutions such as insurances against damages (Thomas, 775-83). Thomas points out, while contemporary theorists began to develop economic and social theories, personal misfortunes seemed to fall into a different category, which is one reason why beliefs in witchcraft persisted longer than popular magic (784). One might stipulate that technological and scientific progress brought on the decline of magic. However, Thomas argues that the “in England magic lost its appeal before the appropriate technical solutions had been devised to replace its place” (786). Instead, the decline of magic should be “intellectual and religious factors” (ibid.). The sphere of the magical is in contrast to both a conception of a rational universe and to an empirical understanding of the nature of things. When the fear of the unknown is really a fear of the unknowable – what we will never be able to learn – it is in principle an experience of the sublime. In Journal of the Plague

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Year, a moment of sublime experience is when he looks into the “great Pit”. Considerable part of his indignation with the unbelievers is a result of his confusion at their not sharing his experience. In their minds, the “pit” is a nonphenomenon. But to him, it is a moment of sublime revelation.10 The fear of the unknown is at odds with the sense of certainty. The contrast is a basic one. It can be traced through the opposition between amazement and certainty, between feelings of speechlessness and the confidence of being able to put an empirical measure and probability to all experiences. There is a “beyond description”. And there is complication because there is the possibility of false beliefs and even delusions in regard to empirical knowledge (empirical here meaning accessible by our senses). Because of this possibility, the language of amazement is found not just to describe the confrontation with the transcendent unknowable, but also to describe more profane moments. What is called the language of amazement is a description of emotive states of fear. Fear having a concrete object, amazement is less focused. It might be likened to surprise: Certainly, what makes the concepts of “amazement” and “surprise” conspicuous is that they include both emotional and cognitive aspects. The failure of verbal expression is accompanied by an emotionally blank moment, before joy or fear can be felt. The emotional responses are initial immediate reactions. They are not sophisticated or abstract feelings. Perhaps this has induced some of Defoe’s audience to overlook the balanced nature of his representations of fear, which are by no means limited to moments of paranoia, which is the form of fear most readily quoted in regard to Roxana. There are several outstanding studies of the religious dimension of Defoe’s work. J. Paul Hunter’s The Reluctant Pilgrim as well as Leo Damrosch’s God’s Plot and Man’s Story and G. A. Starr’s Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography trace the significance of theological narrativity for Defoe’s work. Furthermore, two studies, Rodney Baine’s Defoe and the Supernatural, and Katherine Clark’s Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence, provide two attempts to approach the religious dimension of Defoe’s work by offering a holistic view of how Defoe dealt with religious material. Similarly, there are excellent studies on the ethical, that is, the meta-moral, discourse in Defoe and how the narrative characteristics of ethical argumentation come to bearing in Defoe’s fiction. Notable among these studies are G. A. Starr’s Defoe and Casuistry and Stuart Sim’s Negotiations with Paradox. In addressing the religious dimension of Defoe’s work and in noting what might be called a “historical reflex” in Defoe’s attitude toward his material (see 10 For a broader discussion of the social dimensions of the experience of the sublime in A Journal of the Plague Year, see also Gary Hentzi (1993).

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above), one detects that Defoe tries to understand the structure of religious experience in his narrative rendering of it. In this, he is indebted to the supernaturalists in that they present stories of individual experiences as “evidence”. The isolated incident, told in terms of a story, usually embedded in the frame of a larger narrative or tract, always moralised and assessed by the frame narrator, takes the form of a parable or an exemplary story. Not only could one argue that Defoe imitates the New Testament by using such a narrative device, he also draws on the tradition of the fable, possibly also the oriental tale, but certainly he is indebted to the supernatural material of the seventeenth century. These parabolic episodes are by no means exclusively “supernatural”. Still, whenever Defoe includes an isolated episode, his narrators usually offer a reflection of the incident that tries to understand its content, which translates into an epistemological exercise. When the episode indeed addresses a conception of the supernatural, for example, Robinson’s dream, H.F.’s encounters with apparition stories, Moll’s vision of hell, or Roxana’s storm experience, Defoe’s appropriation of an epistemological attitude towards his material gives the reader an insight into his awareness of the formation of beliefs and convictions. Writers on the supernatural recite several stories of the Scriptures to support their argument, especially since if there are apparitions, magic, devils and witches in the Bible, they can be credited with scriptural authority, whether they be good or bad. The Book of Daniel receives special attention, because Daniel experienced visions and because the madness of Nebuchadnezzar and the vision of Belshazzar are each quasi-archetypical examples of supernatural phenomena. Historically and theologically speaking, the attention to prophetic texts can be explained by the millenarianism present in 17th-century Protestant thinking (Jacob 100-142). According to Margaret Jacob, the millenarianism of the new scientists like Isaac Newton and latitudinarians like Henry More was less radical than the millenarianism of the radical sects after the English Revolution. Rather, it can be understood as part of the process of the consolidation of church and state occurring after the Restoration (104f.). This shows the inverse relationship between the texts on the supernatural and their theological contexts. The tracts on the supernatural set out to provide evidence or at least conjectural legitimacy to given beliefs, rather than try and create new theological content. Having said that Defoe engages in an epistemology of beliefs, one can see why rationality and justification form a recurrent theme in his work, both factual and fictional. Not unusually for his time, Defoe is also aware that religious beliefs may have political ramifications. It is not surprising, then, that he adopts a line of reasoning that connects judgment, politics and moral standing. Max Novak in his Defoe and the Nature of Man particularly highlights the political

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dimension of personal and religious identities of the individual in Defoe’s work. The current debate on Defoe’s concept of rationality focuses on Defoe’s relationship to the main figures in philosophy and political sciences of his time. In his study Defoe and the Supernatural (1968), Rodney Baine meticulously traces Defoe’s writings on the supernatural and carefully argues Defoe’s authorship of the single tracts and treatises that Baine discusses. Baine offers an excellent overview of the supernatural topics that Defoe was interested in. He historicizes Defoe’s writings and focuses on Defoe’s beliefs. While Baine points out that Defoe voices repeated concern about the power of the imagination in the sense of illusion and self-deception, and consequently stresses the “twin lights of Revelation and Reason” (81), he does not treat the supernatural tracts from an epistemological perspective. If implicitly present, the problem of the regress of justification does not concern Baine. Baine’s discussion of Defoe’s “prophecy” looks at Defoe’s use of a prophetic narrating persona, which Defoe adopted already in the Review and then keeps employing in later tracts (109-130).11 In this guise, Defoe speculates about possible developments and presents conjectural prophecies about the future. Baine clearly states that Defoe was aware of Jonathan Swift’s “Bickerstaff” of 1708,12 and that Defoe used the mask of the prophet, rather than made predictions. In one case Defoe published a disclaimer that he had no supernatural powers when his predictions turned out to be true (111). In the Review, as Baine explains, as well as in Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe indeed dares make predictions about, to his mind, inevitable events, such as a new outbreak of the plague. Moreover, Defoe prognosticates the demise of various monarchs on the Continent (Baine 111-2, 116). As Baine argues, Defoe had a more serious ulterior motive when he wrote such predictions, which was to warn of the “waste and horror of war” (Baine, 118). Clearly, Defoe is writing in answer to the market’s demand for almanacs and prophecies (cf. Capp, 1979). According to Baine, Defoe tried to time his publications so as to give his predictions validity (122ff.). Defoe’s use of the prophetic voice is pre-eminently political and not spiritual, and Baine does not discuss whether or not Defoe reflected on the possibility of Divine prescience. 11 Baine identifies The British Visions, or Isaac Bickerstaff’s Twelve Prophecies for the Year 1711, The Highland Visions, ort he Scots New Prophecy, Declaring in Twelve Visions what Strange Things shall Come to Pass in the Year 1712, The SecondSighted Highlander, or Predictions and Foretold Events, Especially about the Peace, By the Famous Scots Highlander (1713), and The Second-Sighted Highlander, Being Four Visions of the Eclypse (1715), which Baine thinks safe to attribute to Defoe. 12 Predictions for the Year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff.

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Baine’s work on the supernatural in Defoe is in close chronological proximity to Keith Thomas’s book, which argues for the decline of magic. Baine and Thomas differ diametrically in their conception of religion in the early Enlightenment. Katherine Clark is certainly correct in arguing that their difference of understanding reflects the critical debate of the late 1960s and that a reassessment of the religious paradigms in Defoe and indeed of Defoe’s time is called for. Clark’s ambitious recent work Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence of 2007 undertakes to broadly contextualize Defoe’s voice and his favoured topics. Thus, Clark discusses some of Defoe’s early work, his attitude towards Dissent, and heterodoxy, the relevance of the political theories of Milton and Locke, the historical circumstances of the British Union of 1707, the problem of credit, orthodoxy and family, Defoe’s historical vision in the face of the economic and religious social developments in his lifetime. Her discussions firstly of the relationship between meaning and credit (97-102), and secondly of the significance of idolatry and Defoe’s attack on Deism (196-208), are particularly interesting. As Clark’s book addresses primarily the historical context of Defoe’s ideas, it provides a helpful point of reference to this study. While Clark possibly underrates the degree to which Defoe was influenced by the ideas he attacked, she fully recognizes the polemical, religious and intellectual significance of Defoe’s engagement with supernatural material. She does not dismiss his engagement as irrelevant nor does she disqualify Defoe’s interest as arcane or esoteric. Such a dismissal would surely stem from a misconception of his use of supernatural imagery in his work. Similarly, Lorraine Daston’s work on the intellectual histories of wonder and magic and her discussion of the relevance of such ideas for the history of science provide a reading of the topic and historical period that steers away from a rationalistic bias against wonder while offering an extremely insightful interpretation demonstrating the theoretical productivity of said ideas for science. Crucially, Defoe uses the form of the supernatural tract to comment on problems of judgment, personal faith, reliability and knowledge. In this, he is not alone. Indeed, it is difficult to understand the three above-mentioned tracts outside the context of the supernaturalist debate. It appears that the supernatural is never the sole subject matter but always relates to political, ethical and epistemological problems. Moreover, since supernaturalism posits a world in which supernatural forces are at work, spirits may be angelic or demonic. Hence, it is the meta-discourse concerning problems of knowledge and problems of evil

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that deserves our attention, especially when postulating the supernatural story as a subgenre of fiction, as suggested by Michael McKeon (History of the Novel). Michael McKeon’s History of the Novel moreover provides a key discussion of the significance of the discourse on the supernatural for the theory of fiction. If Max Novak observes Defoe’s general dislike of the fictional mode (cf. Novak, 1964), McKeon invites us to reconsider Defoe’s attitude towards fiction and language from yet another angle. Turning to Defoe’s work on the supernatural we will see that he appropriates the critique of Descartes’ sceptical method typical for a supernaturalist and imagist like Joseph Glanvill. However, while the response to scepticism fuels Defoe’s writing to a large extent, his use of supernatural materials (i.e. tracts and treatises by seventeenth-century writers on supernatural phenomena and natural magic) is historical in the sense that he reflects on the critical activity of his predecessors and arrives at a position that defends the basis of faith in reason and language, but also acknowledges the sceptical and moral challenges.

1.6 S EEKING C ERTAINTY

OF

S ELF

Facing the possibility of supernatural events, one has two options. First, one can accept their reality. Second, one denies the event and ascribes the experience to hallucination or deception. Famously, Tzvetan Todorov points out that the narration of the former belongs to the sphere of the marvellous, the narration of the latter belongs to the sphere of the uncanny. The space in-between, Todorov suggests, is the sphere of the fantastic, in which the observer has not yet been able to achieve certainty about the sphere in which he or she is moving (1975:25). In a sense, supernaturalism does not recognize such uncertainty. It always treats the marvellous. Yet, there is always also the possibility of delusion. Defoe’s fictional treatment of the supernatural either concerns the experience of the demonic and the divine or it concerns the way in which judgment and thought is structured and possibly led astray. His treatment always begs the question of how our sense of reality and self can be disrupted. Deception and delusion are major topics in the witchcraft debate. That both alleged victim and alleged witch can be deceived or deluded is a key argument of those who oppose the idea that there is witchcraft. On the other hand, most accounts of demonic seduction are based on the idea of the Devil as trickster who is capable to deceive his victims. The difference between deception and delusion seems gradual rather than qualitative, and it does not cover the modern distinction between error and insanity. Even though writers like Reginald Scot

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and John Webster use the word “deluded” in the sense of “mad”, and although they point out pathological madness as a reason why a witch may claim to have supernatural powers, delusion is not necessarily the same as mad. It does not always signify disease and pathology. In its most extreme form, mental disorder does not at all exist as a category, so that a victim’s visions and delusions are confirmed by witnesses even though those witnesses only see and hear the victim, never the visions the victim claims to have. Yet, when someone like John Webster who was a physician, speaks of madness as a loss of reason and understanding he subsumes it under the general heading of melancholy (chap. V, p. 93). Still, he argues that one cannot accept the statement of a person suffering from delusions as reliable regardless of the question of pathology. In terms of mental health and illness, even those opposing witchcraft allegations do not under all circumstances claim that the claims to have suffered from diabolical mischief or to have a witch’s powers are expressions of mental illness. Nor do they, if they speak of such claims as delusions, consider them necessarily as pathological. Therefore, within the witchcraft debate and generally within the discourse on the supernatural, one should not consider madness or melancholy and delusion, as well as delusion and deception as synonyms, even though they each describe closely related states of mind. Still, the arguments against folk beliefs, such as beliefs in magical transformations and demonic possession, build on an entirely biological, natural and physical conception of madness. They describe the physical effects of possession on the body, which Roxana uses in inversion: she describes herself as possessed in order to give expression to her physical state (278f.). Nebuchadnezzar’s madness is possibly the best-known story about a man, a king even, “transformed” into a beast. In order to dismiss the supernatural reading of this story, John Webster’s reading of the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness styles the episode as the result of a disease. Webster supplements his reading of the story with several examples of madness taken from medical records. Thus he describes how patients suffering from rabies went mad. Webster’s point is that Nebuchadnezzar did not change into a beast, but imagined he was a beast. One should not mistake the metaphor with the actual state of the patient. Rather, Webster sees madness or melancholy, as he calls it, as a biological natural state, for example induced by infection as in the case of rabies (Chap. V, pp. 85f., 9095). In an analogous attempt at making human experience this-worldly, confusion is a recurring theme in Defoe’s fictions. It may be that the protagonist cannot interpret events, as in Robinson Crusoe, when he sees the footprint on the beach. As J. Paul Hunter observes, Crusoe’s life is “disordered and confused”. His

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behaviour is effectively “feverish” (1966: 171). Alternatively, confusion can be the result of unpredictable developments, as in Roxana, when her daughter introduces herself. Or else, it arises with inexplicable events, as when Moll Flanders experiences an auditory hallucination. Confusion may also be the only response in the face of an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt. In all these cases, confusion, whether in the form of fear, awe, wonder, or terror, is above all the expression of the failure of normal judgment. Judgment, reason and communication fail. In his Before Novels, Hunter memorably argues that Defoe’s novels show his engagement with epistemology. Building on the traditions of the spiritual selfexploratory autobiography the emergent novelistic form plays with experience and interpretation. Hunter points out that the epistemological concern would have been quite obvious to eighteenth-century readers who were familiar with the “patterns and meanings” to be “discovered by the close observation of the details of a life”. What is new, as Hunter so convincingly puts, is that stories are not taken at face value and that the reliability of the narrator becomes the major concern: Instead of authority and certitude, therefore, first-person perspective offered a field for speculation and sorting; to recount events as personal experience was to raise the questions of meaning and significance that a diarist faced in reviewing his or her own life. ‘Face value’ was not a viable option for a diarist… or a first-person narrator of any kind at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (45-6)

Defoe’s supernatural tracts shed light on a related approach to the same epistemological anxiety about the reliability of judgment as Hunter attributes to the autobiographical tradition. According to Richard Holton’s account (2001), self-deception involves not just deception by the self but also about the self. The crucial difference is that the former is a question of control and the latter is a question of knowledge. When dealing with deceptions by the self, the subject convinces himself or herself into believing something that is not the case. When dealing with deceptions about the self, the subject demonstrates a lack of understanding of himself or herself, and thus makes errors of judgment. In these latter cases, the victim of self-deception needs to ask how justified a belief is (cf. Holton 2001: 55). Speaking of selfdeception, one has to ask whether or not the issue at stake will affect selfknowledge. Holton argues that self-deception always involves a lack of knowledge about the self, which lack becomes apparent in hindsight (ibid.). Following his argument, self-deception constitutes a form of ignorance; and as he points out, “self-ignorance” was a phrase employed by seventeenth-century

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writers but lost in usage since (2001: 54). On the other hand, according to the more orthodox view, self-deception and ignorance of the self may be seen as a lack of moral fortitude. Attempts at explaining self-deception then focus on the question why such a lack of knowledge is possible (53). Holton is right to point out that “wishful thinking, involving no mistake as to the warrant for the belief, does not constitute self-deception” (55). Moreover, his overall argument that self-deception is necessarily a mistake about the self is crucial. As Holton suggests, this conceptualization of self-deception saves us from the perplexities of explaining how the self manages to deceive itself (56). Furthermore, Holton demonstrates that the general bias towards explaining selfdeception as “deception by the self” is rooted in the Christian tradition (66ff.). From Paul, Augustine to Blaise Pascal and Richard Baxter, self-deception is a lack of self-knowledge or a form of ignorance that involves a wilful act by the self to deny what is evidently true about the individual in question. Selfdeception in the sense of “deceiving oneself” is, according to Holton, a way of “explaining a mistake about the self” (68). Confusion is surely a problem of interpretation. It is the inability to read the signs. It is moreover a problem of judgment which requires that there be someone else agreeing with the same. It is therefore an expression of isolation, since certainty is only attained when there is someone else to share the judgment. This is not only true of science (cf. Shapin), this is also true of Defoe’s fictional heroes. Moll Flanders teams up with Mother Midnight and the gentleman-robber Jemy. Roxana is never left by Amy (with one vital exception). Robinson finds Friday who becomes a reflection of Robinson. Similarly, religion provides the frame of reference to avoid confusion. Not only do Defoe’s fictions follow the patterns of Puritan conversion and spiritual narratives, such as the spiritual autobiography (as shown by Starr and Hunter), they also tell of moments where the protagonist, unintentionally, encounters the supernatural. Crucially, such encounters may fall outside the framework of religion. After all, the claim to have been directly divinely inspired is considered heretical by the Puritans. It is such experience that is sought by the Quakers. And while the Quakers feature in Defoe’s fiction, they remain ambivalent figures. Having said that, one should say that since the prophets of the Bible, the only natural response to an encounter with the divine has been a deep disconcertion. In Defoe’s work, we see a clear connection between the concept of knowledge and certainty and the problem of testimony. In the supernatural tracts, Defoe not only historicizes our concerns with science and religion, he also presents us with anecdotal evidence that forces us to pose questions of trustworthiness, credibility and truth. Moreover, by introducing us to the

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discourse on the supernatural Defoe confronts the possibilities resulting from supernatural entities, ranging from demonic to divine. While the supernatural itself becomes “productive” in the fictions in the form of diabolic and divine presence, which invades the individual space of the protagonists and leads to a dialectic between the immanent and the transcendent, between the sublime and the profane, between human and supernatural. Yet, in the fictions what really matters is the human response to these possibilities, trust and doubt, amazement and wonder, which takes us to the question whether certainty may be attained and with this final turn the fictions disclose their theological subtext to the reader. In order to do justice to the concept of knowledge within Defoe’s work, one has to acknowledge that possessing, understanding and imparting information are cognitive activities, which preoccupy Defoe in all his writing. Furthermore, Defoe is aware that one can bring about a new state of affairs by controlling the flow of information. One may wonder then whether Defoe considers the performative capacities of language to actively speak meaning into existence. The answer is yes and no. On the one hand, Defoe’s concept of language relies on a stable representational relationship between word and object. Meaning and truth exist independently of their linguistic representation. On the other hand, Defoe seems acutely aware of the manipulative and hence representational abilities of language; this view obviously would account for a certain wariness of fiction, which is detectable in his work. Hence, just as there is evident knowledge, there is the possibility of delusion and deception. Defoe’s remarkable treatment of the latter possibility shows that despite misgivings about the manipulative properties of fiction, Defoe is apt to consciously explore what can be done in discourse with the state of “as if”, which might be defined as a positive version of delusion. One might argue that Defoe’s curiosity about the purposes and uses of apparently irrational cognitive behaviour stems from his work on the supernatural discourse. The idea of foreknowledge figures large in his fiction. While ridiculed by some and questioned by most contemporaries, foreknowledge can be considered separately from its historical context in Biblical prophecy, or contemporary astrology (cf. Capp, 1979). Defoe does not contradict the orthodox religious view of the truth of Biblical prophecy. But he seems to play with the idea of what it means to know beforehand, in sacred, but especially also in profane ways. In rational terms, foreknowledge translates quite simply into “planning for all eventualities”. Consider all options, and prepare for the most viable one, anticipate all possible consequences and prepare to fend off the worse. Such anticipation is an intellectual exercise. But it involves knowing and

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owning all kinds of information. Moreover, it requires that you be aware of your own bias and prejudice. Rational detachment to such a degree is difficult to accomplish, but characters like H.F. in Journal of the Plague Year, and Robinson Crusoe, practise such rationality with some success. Foreknowledge has a different side to it. Apart from the questions of rationality, it strongly evokes emotional responses. Anticipating danger, the subject will suffer from anxiety. The narrations of Roxana, Moll, and H.F., as well as Robinson, often play with expressions of fear and terror. As a kind of counter-measure to address the anxiety, H.F. resorts to a type of magic in order to find out more about the future. Magic is primarily about trying to bring about a state of affair that will be more congenial, beneficial and productive to the subject. It claims to manipulate surroundings to the will of its user. Such is the concept of magic that Defoe refers to in A System of Magick. Defoe criticizes and dismisses this view of magic, but it does not stop his fictional characters from trying to “speak into being” a version of events that will benefit them. Their control of information is much like a magic trick. Such ability does not stop them from feeling what one might call “dissonance” when they look back on their past decisions. In order to debate how Defoe’s fictional protagonists come to terms with uncertainty and fear, on the one hand, and how the narratives construct certainty, the subsequent discussion proposes to look at Defoe’s supernaturalism from three points of view. First, we will consider his tracts in their discursive context. In particular, we will analyse how they deal with the singular nature of the evidence given in the “supernatural” material. Second, we will discuss how certain patterns of explanation function in the fictional narratives, which find a more overt description in the supernatural tracts. Such transformations concern patterns of anticipation and deliberation. Third, we will examine how images of the supernatural expands Defoe’s emotional vocabulary.

1.7 C HAPTER O VERVIEW The first chapter focuses on the problem of testimony in supernaturalism. Defoe and his predecessors usually refer to stories told by witnesses or found in the Bible. The narrative form of these “evidential stories” underlines the subjective nature of the evidence. How to justify the status of such stories as evidence is the basis of any supernaturalist debate. Defoe addresses this challenge, because he is particularly absorbed with the narrative and dramatic potential of such stories. The question is how to represent an extraordinary phenomenon with any degree

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of credibility. Moreover, the insistence on the individual case emphasises the singular nature of subjective experience, which is exploited in novelistic narratives. The subsequent chapter addresses the rationality of belief in supernaturalism. To begin with, one can argue that scepticism on Defoe’s part takes the form of a dubiety about the susceptibility of the human mind to suggestion. Yet, his view of the imagination is not unconditionally dismissive. On the contrary, despite his doubts about human judgment, he plays with the similarity between fiction and the hypothetical. Still, in context of the supernatural tracts, the role of the imagination in Defoe’s work does not easily allow us to separate it from its enthusiastic and delusional manifestations. Furthermore, one might define fiction as a kind of delusion or a form of deception. We have to ask what happens when the discussion of the nature of fiction as a product of the imagination is transported into the narratives and the supernatural tracts, where they no longer serve to criticise writing but where the focus of attention is completely shifted. Looking at imaginings, delusions and deceptions, this chapter continues the discussion of bias and subjectivity. The next chapter returns to the language of supernaturalism. In Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year, and Roxana, the narration of the protagonists’ decisions and their emotions is close to the world of experience of the supernatural tracts. With the bias of hindsight, the narrators try to account for their decisions. They voice dissonance at their experience when they revisit past conflictual events with the benefit of the two points of view of the remembered young self, and the self present in the now. Consequently, looking back on their lives, the protagonists tend to reinterpret their lives, in order to achieve a greater coherence of their own experience. If prediction and prophecy can be rediscovered in the language of knowledge as anticipation and probability, they serve to establish a sense of continuity in the experience of conflict. Prophecy provides the pattern to explain the plot of the protagonists’ lives. Moreover, as they describe moments of decision and conflict, the language is informed by expressions of emotion remarkably close to the emotions one expects in encounters with the supernatural. Astonishment, surprise, awe, fear and terror are surely not just the most frequent, but above all the best described emotions in Defoe’s fictional narratives. This chapter, then, moves the discussion of subjectivity from problems of cognition and rationality to questions of experience and emotion. The final chapter continues the discussion of subjectivity. Its focus, however, is on the concepts of knowledge and deliberation. In order to do so, the chapter explores how the form of the “evidential story” is used to construct knowledge.

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Defoe embeds his stories in his tracts and fictions, so that they function as misen-abimes. While reading episodic embedded stories as mis-en-abime is fruitful to our understanding of Defoe’s narratives, the point here is that one has to pay attention to the frames of the stories. Looking at the narrative form, one realizes that knowledge is enacted as an exchange between dialogic partners. Somewhat at odds with the idea of an extreme singular subjectivity, knowledge, as it is presented in the tracts and in the fictions, depends on the interaction between witness and reporter. The reporter, however, is not a direct participant in the event. Defoe uses the frame of communication to construct the embedded stories like theatrical scenes, and allows the frame to be manipulated in various ways, which one can see when reading Journal of the Plague Year, Robinson Crusoe and Roxana alongside each other. To return to the question of subjectivity, the narrative fictions represent knowledge as subject to bias and individual perspective. Equally, one can argue that Defoe exploits the idea of a community of knowledge sharing and producing new insights. The representation of knowledge in the fictions is thus a fair negotiation of the certainty of knowledge, and of the necessity of deliberation. It bears a strong hesitation about the merits of subjectivity.

Part I: Daniel Defoe’s Supernaturalism Revisited: Judgment and the Burden of Proof Upon the whole, ’tis a Notion, however it may be received here, perfectly inconsistent with either Reason or reveal’d Religion; and I may venture to say it cannot be, ’tis impossible, and that all the Pretences of a Ghost or Apparition saying it is such a Person, and that it cannot be at Rest ’till so and so be done, and that now it shall go to God, must be a Delusion, and must be added by the Persons relating the Story; for that no Ghost or Spirit really happy could say so, or would impose so much upon us DEFOE, HISTORY OF APPARITIONS, P. 127

2 Daniel Defoe’s Supernatural Tracts and Contemporary Supernaturalism: Problems of Language and Evidence Angels of all sorts are naturally beyond our discovery; and all those intelligences whereof it is likely there are more orders than of corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural faculties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds and thinking beings in other men, as well as himself, every man has a reason, from their words and actions, to be satisfied; and the knowledge of his own mind cannot suffer a man that considers to be ignorant that there is a God. But that there are degrees of spiritual beings between us and the great God, who is there that by his own search and ability can come to know? Much less have we distinct ideas of their different natures, conditions, states, powers, and several constitutions, wherein they agree or differ from one another and from us. And therefore, in what concerns their different species and properties, we are under an absolute ignorance” JOHN LOCKE, ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, BK. IV, CHAP. 3, SECT. 27, P. 454

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2.1 I NTRODUCTION Daniel Defoe’s three major treatises on the supernatural, System of Magick, Essay on the History of Apparitions, Political History of the Devil, and his shorter works on the supernatural, question and redefine their subject matter. Defoe’s treatment of the supernatural may arguably best be assessed by looking at how he adapts and transforms his predecessors’ work on the supernatural, in particular, the work of Joseph Glanvill, the English divine, philosopher, and follower of Henry More. Their preoccupation with the possibility of witchcraft gives the discourse on the supernatural a focal point. The possibility of the existence of witches, whether affirmed or denied, makes for a powerful symbol with which the discourse on the supernatural and its major themes comes to be identified. Defoe takes a critical attitude towards the preceding debates and publications. The History of Apparitions is a collection of apparition stories, not unlike John Aubrey’s Miscellanies of 1721, which claim to be a collection of such curious tales. Written in the voice of “Andrew Moreton”, Defoe’s known satirical persona, Defoe’s distance to an unreflected rendering of apparition stories is already obvious. Defoe moreover weaves various comments and essayistic explanations into his history, which emphasize his distanced attitude toward uncritical treatments of the subject of apparitions: “Depend then upon it, the Souls of our departed Friends, or Enemies, are all in their fix’d and determin’d State” (HA, 124).1 Although the narrators of all three major tracts rely on a cosmology that fully allows for spiritual, or supernatural, interventions into the natural world by arguing for the existence of spirits, capable of interacting with this world, Defoe’s discourse pursues another aim than demonstrating the validity of such an ontology: “[the return of ghosts] would invert the Order of Eternal Justice, for it would make this Earth be the Place of Rewards and Punishments, and the take the Executive Power out of the Hands of the Great Governor of the World” (HA, 123). Ghost apparitions figure eminently in the popular imagination, and, in this instance, Defoe refers to the idea that murderers would be punished by the visitations of the soul of the person they killed (ibid.). However, Defoe’s concern is clearly with the order of things. The discourse on the supernatural is part of the scientific development of the seventeenth century. Its major exponents invoke material, or evidence, which is singular and particular. The obvious problem of such evidence, such as an

1

Also see George Starr’s article “Why Defoe Probably Did Not Write The Apparition of Mrs Veal” (2003: 421).

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apparition story, is that it transcends description and explanation. Moreover, the evidence, usually in the form of a story, falls victim to a regress of justification. Any statement about the evidence elicits yet another statement about the evidence. In other words, no attempt at explaining the assumptions about the nature of the evidence and about the natural world will completely satisfy as explanation. Defoe adopts these topics and focuses on problems of personal judgment and personal knowledge. The problem of evidence extends into a question of the credibility of a witness. To Defoe, the regress of justification mainly consists in evaluating the story and language of the observer. While sincerity and reliability are crucial issues, they are only one aspect of the problem. Defoe’s concern with evidence and justification suggests that the act of narrating, that is, the verbal representation, needs to be reflected. After all, it is paradoxical to try and represent what is virtually unknowable. The engagement with the supernatural story is always a critique of the act of representation. Defoe’s answer seems at first sight very clear: the regress of justification stops with the reference to God and Providence. Yet, two aspects of the problem cannot be argued away. Firstly, Defoe’s work shows that testimony tends to be singular. That is, the question of the validity, reality or truth of an observation relies solely on the word of one person. Secondly, especially in the novels, but also in the anecdotal stories featuring in the supernatural tracts, Defoe relies on the linguistic quality of testimony. Always a speech act, testimony is performative to the extent that it tries to give reality to its content. In order to understand the implications and ramifications of the problem of singularity it is necessary to place Defoe within the discourse on the supernatural, because it is otherwise impossible to appreciate the depth of his response to its sceptical challenge. Consequently, the “supernaturalist” discourse must be adequately conceptualised. Possibly the most concise way to describe the seventeenth-century supernatural tracts is to say that the tracts and treatises deal with the supernatural with a view to the epistemology of natural philosophy. To blame particular people with witchcraft, or to develop a system of demonology or, alternatively, of divine providence(s), defines a different category of text, i.e. the “demonologies”. In this sense, Defoe’s tracts are supernaturalist, not demonological. Tracts on the supernatural written to shed light on aspects of natural philosophy belong in the cultural context of the intellectual elite. Even though theological questions are implicit in the endeavour, the tracts investigate the supernatural in order to assert their assumptions about the universe. In tracing their assumptions about probability, about determinism and free will, and about the epistemological capabilities of science and the single individual, one

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can see how the supernatural tracts build on the topos of knowledge (and indeed power) as well as its negative inversion in the form of ignorance, confusion, and deception. In Charles Taylor’s words, the supernatural tracts explore a representational epistemology that displays an “interpenetration of the scientific and the moral” (1995: 7). It is certainly true that Defoe reads the subjectivity of the evidence as morally committing. Given the significance of the subjective singular testimony, the discourse on the supernatural may be considered as an extreme formulation of Descartes’s cogito, even if the reception of Descartes’ sceptical method is problematic in the discourse. Despite their appeal to the intellectual elite, tracts such as Glanvill’s Sadducism Triumphatus and Webster’s The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft are highly polemical and make abundant use of popular material. Such material includes tales of witchcraft and the devil, as well as ghost stories. As has been observed in recent criticism, the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witness the slow decline in witchcraft beliefs and also of beliefs in a variety of phenomena, such as magic, divination and fortune telling.2 Yet, not all writers on the supernatural actively participate in attacking popular beliefs and educating common readers. Some explicitly address the learned audience. But while deeply spiritual, Defoe indeed writes his supernatural tracts with a view to correct errors of opinion among the common people. Due to its polemical nature, the discourse on the supernatural cannot be easily subsumed under theology, philosophy or science, and it should be distinguished from contemporary physico-theology. The concern with the nature of spirits and the relation between the body and the mind is both ontological and epistemological. Instead of seeking to contextualise the tracts on the supernatural in the history of science, one might plausibly argue that writers such as Glanvill try to make ontological arguments for the existence of spirits and, by extension, for the existence of God. According to social historians and historians of science, the theological and scientific debates of the seventeenth century show a “complex fusion” between science and theology (Jobe 1981: 344). Social historians have shown recently that the mainly pre-revolutionary changes in science were only theologically appropriated in the Restoration. While radical Protestant scientists worked with Paracelsian mystical chemistry, Anglican scientists adopted a mechanical philosophy. Opposition between scientific systems thus reflect theological differences (Jobe 344f.). In his books on the social history of truth and scientific revolutions, Steven Shapin argues that truth is socially constructed in that one needs to trust the 2

Cf. Clark, Hill, Jacob and Thomas.

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veracity of whoever asserts a particular truth (Shapin 1994; 1996). He subsequently shows how crucial mutual trust was for the scientific developments of the 17th century. It is paramount for the scientist to be able to rely on someone else’s findings. Otherwise, there would be no shared gain of knowledge and no advancement in science. Evidently, if conceived of as part of a scientific endeavour, the supernaturalist debate puts the idea of trust and reliability under a great deal of strain. For it is by definition not possible to reproduce a supernatural phenomenon under testable circumstances. In “supernatural” instances, one has to rely solely on the other’s trustworthiness and argumenttation. Even if a person attests to an immediate and personal experience, such a statement will still be subject to the audience’s more or less informed judgment. An eyewitness statement does therefore not resolve the epistemological and empirical difficulty. Whether the supernaturalist writers believe that the boundaries of perception may be pushed, whether they dismiss the interest in the supernatural as impertinent to the study of nature (see below), or whether they find the causes of such phenomena strictly with the testifying witness, the different points of view represented in the discourse on the supernatural share the same meta-discursive concerns. Beside questions of epistemology and empirical method, more basic questions concerning the human mind arise, in particular the understanding of human reason and judgment.

2.2 T HE I DEA OF B EING ABLE TO S TUDY THE S UPERNATURAL Supernaturalism as the interest in particular unexplained phenomena disrupting common human perception of the world is ubiquitous, and can be found with most, if not all, philosophers. If nature follows given rules, one should be able to describe said rules. If the rules of nature can be upset, it has ramifications for the nature of power. Following Francis Bacon, Defoe’s concept of power presupposes knowledge and the responsibility consequent to this knowledge. Therefore, how to negotiate knowledge and power in view of the divine is both highly controversial and political. Notably, Defoe’s own thinking about the supernatural was political as well as ethical, which is consistent with his novelistic work. It also indicates that Defoe’s understanding of ethics, as analysis of human behaviour, was political in outlook, which means that he was interested in how the individual can or should function in society. Clearly, supernaturalism becomes fruitful on different levels. Defoe makes use of the supernatural metaphorically and satirically. Furthermore, he contemplates the

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possibility of actual divine and demonic incursions in human life. Such incursions are the expression of a deterministic providential order. While stressing individual responsibility, Defoe’s work thus remains within the providential framework. The tracts on the supernatural feature the extraordinary, playing on the impossibility, inexplicability and uncertainty of the strange.3 Thomas Hobbes and John Locke make it clear that the supernatural firmly belongs to the realm of faith and religion (also see introductory quotation by Thomas Hobbes). Thus, Locke maintains that Angels of all sorts are naturally beyond our discovery; and all those intelligences whereof it is likely there are more orders than of corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural faculties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds and thinking beings in other men, as well as himself, every man has a reason, from their words and actions, to be satisfied; and the knowledge of his own mind cannot suffer a man that considers to be ignorant that there is a God. But that there are degrees of spiritual beings between us and the great God, who is there that by his own search and ability can come to know? (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Chap. 3, sect. 27, p. 454)

Locke’s introspective argument here smoothly blends religious and spiritual aspects with the sceptical speculation about how one may know the minds of others. But while he firmly dismisses that “our natural faculties” could “give…[an] account” of an order of spirits, he also asserts a theocentric view of nature. Virtually every English philosophical, theological or polemical writer of the 17th- and late 16th-centuries refers to supernatural phenomena, either in terms of the power of the imagination, or in terms of legal ramifications of witchcraft pleas, or in regard to the Providential Order, or else by reciting tales of apparitions and visions. It is therefore difficult to establish Defoe’s sources. However, in some cases, we know the source because Defoe names it, as with Joseph Glanvill, who will be discussed at some length below. Rodney Baine’s study gives a good overview of Defoe’s possible sources, including Richard Baxter’s Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (1691). Baine seems to accept a basic dichotomy between faith and science and points out that the discourse on the supernatural follows the main difference between a sceptical view of supernatural phenomena, on the one hand, and angelologist and demonological works, on the other (Baine, 3ff.). He proposes reading the supernatural material in light of the Locke-Stillingfleet controversy and the Clarke-Collins 3

Cf. William Phipps, Supernaturalism in Christianity: Its Growth and Cure, 1989: 66.

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controversy, which leads to the understanding of Defoe’s supernatural tracts as a response to “freethinkers, deists and sceptics” who “undermine faith” (Baine, 3). Baine does not accept the interpretation that spirituality was on the decline in the late 17th- and early 18th-century, as is put forward by Keith Thomas. Apart from demonologies and angelologies, witchcraft tracts constitute a major group within the supernaturalist discourse. Within this field of discourse, there are writers who stand out for the unconventionality of their writing, which made their works lasting influences throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. One such figure is Reginald Scot (c. 1538- 1599), who wrote his Discovery of Witchcraft in 1584. He mainly attacks Jean Bodin (Démonomanie, 1580), but also the Malleus Maleficarum (first published in Speyer, in 1486, written by Heinrich Kramer) for the good reason that Scot considers the criminal responsibility and evidentiary support in witchcraft charges of the defendants key issues of the witchcraft debate. Scot represents the witches who have confessed to acts of witchcraft as women suffering from melancholy delusions. Furthermore, he denies that there is anything such as witchcraft and argues that the Scriptures have been mistranslated or misrepresented when cited to legitimate witch-hunts. Apart from his scepticism, Scot’s major contribution to the debate is to explain the phenomenon of witch-hunts by social factors, such as poverty and education.4 After Scot, it is virtually impossible to prove or disprove witchcraft without taking into account the legal ramifications, and the very real danger that innocent people are made to suffer. Similarly to Reginald Scot, Joseph Glanvill is a point of reference in the discourse on the supernatural. He wrote his major contribution, Sadducism Triumphatus, to refute John Webster. John Webster (1611-82) was a chemist, schoolmaster (from 1643), polemicist, minister (1632-37), and doctor. Having been trained by the Hungarian Johannes Banfi Hunyades (1576–1646), chemist to the Earl of Pembroke, Webster criticised university learning (Clericuzio, par. 1). For all their differences of opinion, this seems an interesting parallel to Defoe, who attacks the idea that a good education is only to be had at university (cf. Richetti, The Life of Daniel Defoe). His understanding of natural magic is also present in his 1677 treatise The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft that denies the existence of real witches. With Webster’s discussion of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar, his denial of real witches constitutes two more significant parallels with Defoe’s work. In their various works, William Burns (An Age of Wonders, 2002), Stuart Clark (Thinking with Demons, 1997), Lorraine Daston (Biographies of Scientific 4

David Wootton, ‘Scot, Reginald (d. 1599)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

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Objects, 2000), Christopher Hill (The World Turned Upside Down, 1972, “Science and Magic”), Margaret Jacob (The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720, 1976, and The Radical Enlightenment, 1981), Thomas Jobe (“The Devil in Restoration Science: The Glanvill-Webster Witchcraft Debate,” 1981), G. L. Kittridge (Witchcraft in Old and New England, 1972); Moody Prior (“Joseph Glanvill, Witchcraft and Seventeenth-Century Science”. Modern Philology 30:1 (August, 1932): 167-193); and Keith Thomas (Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971) suggest that seventeenth-century thinking on supernaturalism is best understood in relation to the scientific revolution and the fundamental political changes of the seventeenth century, i.e. from Revolution to Restoration and constitutional monarchy and the attendant development of religious toleration. Despite differences in approach and topical emphasis, these critics agree that to an early-modern understanding, science and magic do not yet represent two opposing paradigms. It is not a simple endeavour to try and describe Defoe’s work on the supernatural along clear-cut dichotomies. It may indeed be argued that some of the favoured binary oppositions, such as faith and science, do not yet exist, or do not yet have the structuring force that they later attain in quasiscientific discourses. Supernatural entities such as demons and devils are not yet necessarily distinguished from natural entities. Characteristically, though, the discourse on the supernatural raises the question of the exact boundaries of the natural world (cf. Clark, “Witchcraft and Science”, 151-160). As Stuart Clark says, “the ontology of the demonic was entirely reverse of today’s. In early modern Europe it was virtually the unanimous opinion of the educated that devils, and a fortiori, witches, not merely existed in nature but acted according to its laws” (152). By comparison, Daniel Defoe asserts the existence of the devil, but denies that witches have any extraordinary powers. The devil, moreover, draws his power from the person believing in him. He is the arch-trickster trying to seduce man or woman, but the victim is responsible for having allowed himself or herself to be misled (cf. A System of Magick, History of the Devil, An Essay on the History of Apparitions).

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2.3 ANALYSING THE S UPERNATURAL According to Lorraine Daston’s argument, the supernatural falls into two different categories, the supernatural and the preternatural.5 The two categories imply different basic assumptions about the substance of the supernatural. “Preternatural science” as described by Daston designates the attempt to understand the wonders and marvels. As Daston observes, “despite the unflinching commitment of its practitioners to natural explanation, firmly excluding both the demonic and the divine, preternatural philosophy looked distinctly unnatural from the standpoints of natural philosophies that had both preceded and would succeed it” (Daston 2000: 18). They were scholars who thought that magic and marvels – that is, unexplained phenomena – belong to the preternatural, which literally means beyond nature, but not above nature, as the literal translation of supernatural suggests. They explored the wonders of this world that did not fall into the universal concepts of nature; rather, they looked at the particular and at the extraordinary. They investigated supernatural and preternatural phenomena as explicable, if not by the laws of traditional science. Famous exponents of this understanding of nature were Paracelsus, John Dee, and as a later follower, John Webster. According to Daston, these preternatural scientists did not think that witches for example could have the kind of power ascribed to them. But they would acknowledge the existence of magic, as it might be a part of nature the laws of which have not yet been discovered. On the other hand, we have a second camp favouring a concept of nature and science based on universal principles and order. Again, the supernatural is part of the universal nature of things, and ultimately understandable in this sense, but it remains above our nature. These scholars however tended to believe that marvels and wonders were the works of the devil and that witches were in league with the devil. Thus, in terms of history of science we find two opposing paradigms, the universal versus the particular. In Daston’s words, “… the insistence that science ought to be about regularities – be they qualitative or quantitative, manifest to the senses or hidden beneath appearances, causal or statistical, taken from commonplace experience or created by specialized instruments in laboratories – has persisted long after the demise of

5

Daston, Lorraine. “The Coming Into Being of Scientific Objects,” “Preternatural Philosophy.” Ed. Daston, Lorraine. Biographies of Scientific Objects. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. 1-14, 15-41. Also see Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 2001.

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Aristotelianism” (Daston 2000: 16). As she points out, the more marginal position of the preternatural scientists apparently disappears in the course of the Enlightenment. What happens is that Enlightenment science accepts the challenge that particulars must be explored, explained and integrated. Thus, the pertinent questions are whether or not the supernatural or preternatural is accepted as a subject of science and whether or not it is held possible to obtain knowledge about it. The discourse on the supernatural shows not only how the boundary between what we think we know and what we believe, is demarcated, but also, how the line between knowledge and belief is prone to meander. In recent criticism, two developments are placed in the foreground. One is the influence of the occult philosophy, magic and astrology on the emergence of the so-called new sciences in the seventeenth century. The second is the observation of the decline of popular beliefs. Speaking about the connection between the English Revolution, radicalism and the new science, Margaret Jacob points out that political and social motives were behind the “assault upon magical and animistic explanations of nature by the major Christian scientists” (1981: 31). The dichotomy of rational and irrational does not suffice to describe the development of the new scientific attitude towards nature, which takes the place of magical thinking. In Jacob’s opinion, magical thinking is associated with “popular heresy and social protest coming for the lower orders of society” which finds its voice during the English Revolution. In opposition to the theology of the established Church, the Leveller and radicals’ natural philosophy assumes that “nature is a sufficient … cause for the existence and workings of man and his physical environment” (Jacob, 32). This conception of nature is both materialist and pantheistic and takes its origin in a magical and naturalistic view of the universe. The new science however excludes the possibility of spiritual agency in nature or the “working of spirit in the universe”, or the “ability of a magician to control nature”, even though the mechanism and materialism of the new science was furthered by the magical thinking of the radicals of the Revolution. One of the fundamental questions posed by mechanism was how to reconcile a mechanistic conception of the universe with Christian orthodoxy. The mechanical science in the second half of the seventeenth century supports the “established institutions and traditional religious and political authority”. The Newtonian mechanical philosophy “argued in the strongest possible terms for a material order that was moved by spiritual forces outside of matter, by a providential creator who maintained a system of spiritual forces that regulated and controlled nature” (Jacob, 32).

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If the New Science did not think it possible that the natural order could be manipulated other than by the creator, popular demonism attributes witches with the power to upset nature at least on the smaller scale of hurting a single human being. The witch gains such power by the influence of the devil. However, in Early Modern Protestant culture, the Devil was thought to work by temptation. Nathan Johnstone observes that, following the Reformation, Early Modern Protestant culture did not dismiss the Devil as a personal entity, but that the “emphasis was on internal temptation. Devotional, literary and even visual culture either presented the Devil as an entirely spiritual presence, or blurred the dynamic of temptation when he was presented physically” (8). If the Devil does not disappear – in History of the Devil, Defoe in fact suggests that the Devil is an individual entity –, the Devil becomes a “functionalist symbol of evil” (Johnstone, ibid.). Similarly, the witch could be read as a popular symbol of temptation and fall. Moreover, indeed, the witch serves as the symbolic figure around which questions of evidence, perception, validity of proof, and sound testimony may be grouped, as religious doctrine merges with scientific findings. In addition, studies focussing on the socio-historical development note the contemporary decline of traditional popular beliefs. Belief in astrology and magic remedies allegedly disappear slowly from contemporary practice. Seventeenth-century social theories give rise to alternative models to explain social and economic dynamics. As Thomas points out in his study on religion and the decline of magic, it is one of the movements of thought of the Enlightenment that sociological and economic causes for events such as plagues would be cited, rather than having responsibility for natural disasters and diseases allotted to supernatural forces, magic or witchcraft. But, crucially, these new approaches, while rejecting supernaturalist beliefs such as a faith in astrology, “rejected the notion that social phenomena were purely random; every event… had a cause, even if it was still hidden. … The immediacy of the doctrine of divine providence was inevitably much reduced by this assumption that God had bound himself to work through sociological causes as well as physical ones” (783, 784). Indeed, determinism is a strong element and informs most of the writing, both factual and fictional. Thomas also observes that witchcraft beliefs were more persistent because they “explained individual misfortunes” (ibid.), but such explanations would also be replaced by finding reasons for misfortune with upbringing or social background (ibid.). These socio-theoretical insights seem to contribute to the moral tendency of the Enlightenment to see the individual as part of a social contract with duties and obligations; and these new theories, too, subscribe to an orthodox view of state and religion.

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In the context of this intellectual striving to integrate new insight and established belief in order to maintain both political and religious order, the interest in the preter- and supernatural becomes conceivable. The distinction between preternatural and supernatural can explain at least in part some of the intellectual developments in the new sciences and their reconciliation with Christianity. Preternatural seems to become an auxiliary concept to explain the so far inexplicable. It also sets up a category that expressly does not designate the supernatural and the miraculous but still subsumes entities and phenomena outside our natural experience. While the meaning of the word “supernatural” seems obvious, clarification was necessary. It is indeed a simplification to speak of a “discourse on the supernatural”. The supernatural needs to be distinguished from the natural as well as from the preternatural. Besides the nature of purpose, motivation and effect, “supernatural” is used to characterise miracles, as it means what is “above” nature. Miracles are not only good and beneficial: they are worked outside the frame of nature. Clark observes that the demonologists distinguished between miracles (miracula) and wonder (mira) and thought that even though demons have extraordinary powers in comparison to humans, they still act within their natural powers, whereas angels could minister God’s miracles (153). Likewise, Jane Shaw points out that miracles fall outside the frame of Providential order. Furthermore, she comments that “when an intervention in the world, a shift in the nature of things, was interpreted as a providential act of God, it implied that the intervention resulted from God, be it punishment or reward, of a person’s, a community’s, or a nation’s behaviour.” According to her, the theologians of the Protestant Reformation employed the distinction between “Miranda (wonder) and miracula or mirabilia”, so that “Providential events were seen as Miranda, preternatural events (not above or beyond nature)” (Shaw 2006: 31). Yet, miracles do not form the subject matter of any of the supernatural tracts discussed here. This is not due to any attempt to redefine the supernatural on the part of the writers. Rather, the miraculous, within the debate here discussed, is accepted as real and given, and as such, removed from the discussion. One can explain this attitude by the conformity of the writers to the Protestant doctrine of the cessation of miracles.6 Nearly all the writers on the 6

Cf. Walker, D. P. “The Cessation of Miracles.” Eds. Merkel, Ingrid and Allen G. Debus. Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe. Folger Books. London, Toronto: Associated University Press, 1988. 111-124. Walker’s article discusses the doctrine of the cessation of miracles in preRevolution times. He points out that one reason why Protestant theologians were

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supernatural mentioned here, Gifford, Scot, Glanvill, Webster, and Defoe assert their own orthodoxy and faithfulness to Protestant doctrine. As Shaw argues, “[F]or those who were so influenced by a theology of providence, the notion of a miracle (which might be interpreted as a free gift from God) could be hard to tolerate.“7 Yet, by raising the question of the ontological status of their subject matter, whether it be supernatural, preternatural or natural, the polemicists and philosophers contribute to what Max Weber famously called the “demystification of the world” by claiming that they can successfully allocate the substance and kind of various phenomena.

2.4 D ISENGAGEMENT

FROM

D EMONOLOGICAL D EBATES

Ultimately, the miracle debate led to the denial of witchcraft and demonic phenomena. If, according to doctrine, miracles ceased, by analogy, demonic actions must remain within the frame of providence (cf. Walker, 112). Indeed, by the time that Defoe writes about magic, apparitions and the Devil, the notion that demonology and witch beliefs hold a theological significance is obsolete to writers such as Defoe himself or to his contemporary Francis Hutchinson, even if the Devil remains a distinct entity to be taken seriously. Demonological writings are clearly predecessors of the supernatural tracts, but the focus of attention has shifted to the possibility and epistemology of such beliefs. Thus, the aim is now to explore the scope of knowledge whereas before it was to fight superstition, on the one hand, and evil and heresy, on the other. Instead, they want to analyse and historicise the phenomena. Defoe devotes a large section of System of Magick to the argument that the magicians of old were really scholars and priests.8 In a similar vein, Webster and Scot bemoan the fact that scholars were attacked as magicians when they would be better described as

concerned with this doctrine is that Catholic propaganda used contemporary miracles in anti-Protestant propaganda. Walker also observes that in England both Puritans and Anglicans agreed that the “miracles in the Bible are historically true, but that no such miracles have occurred for about a thousand years” (112). This view is reflected by Webster in his The Displaying of Witchcraft. 7

Cf. Prior, 171.

8

History of religion is a feature of many of the texts, especially the question how to assess the priests of old. Defoe grants that heathen religions ultimately worshipped the devil, but he does not accept that therefore ancient priests and scholars were magicians and sorcerers.

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scientists. As Christopher Hill points out, important impulses for seventeenthcentury new philosophy came from self-taught professionals, as for example from shipwrights, gunners, architects, navigators, or chemists (1980: 15). Thus, writing on the supernatural is an opportunity to defend the new sciences. Likewise, it raised questions about the justness of bringing witches to trial. The arguments against this practice ranged from sociological observations, such as comments on the social status of the typical witch, the tenability of witchcraft knowledge, to legal concerns with the credibility of witnesses. It is in regard to the last two points that imagination, deception and delusion become important. Within this development, Gifford and Scot are both in their ways concerned that there be no innocent victims as a result of witchcraft beliefs. In Gifford’s tract A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraftes. In which is laide open how craftely the Divell deceiveth not onely the Witches but many other and so leadeth them awrie into many great errours of 1593, however, witches and witchcraft are not really the topic. Rather, his dialogue is about the influence of the Devil. It is noteworthy that the concept of evil remains one of a personified presence whose seductive powers and temptation must be consciously resisted. Especially, everyone must learn to recognise the ways in which one may fall prey to the devil’s tricks. In his book George Gifford and the Reformation of the Common Sort, Timothy Scott McGinnis observes that Gifford’s interest in the supernatural was not intellectual but rather theological. Gifford’s aim was not only to do away with various persistent superstitions – including witchcraft beliefs – but also to offer the common people an explanation of the true nature of the Devil’s influence in this world. Gifford saw the influence of the so-called cunning men on the common people as a real threat to their spiritual well being and attacks the common people’s practice to consult a cunning man or woman when they thought they were victims of witchcraft. According to Gifford, not the witches but the cunning men serve as the devil’s instruments, not because of any demonic contract, but because the cunning men encourage the ordinary person to trust in magical devices rather than put their faith in God. In this view none of the parties involved have any real preter- or supernatural power. The concern is solely for the commoner’s faith and conviction, and the issue is the problem of evil. While the devil remains a real entity, the problem of evil is a question of the choice of the individual not to fall for the devil’s temptations in the form of false teachers such as the cunning men. On an archetypical level, a powerful devil in control of human action perpetuates the image of the devil as rebel against God or as God’s persecutor. The rebellious demonic archetype raises the question how the devil obtains his power. But in a deterministic universe the Devil must not have any power or

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freedom, because the Devil cannot act against Providence. To some writers on the witchcraft, the limitation of the devil’s powers is an argument for the opinion that there are no witches.9 Certainly, Gifford’s A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraftes adopts a simple dismissal of the possibility of witchcraft, his aim being to teach the commoners the scope of Divine Providence. Other writers argue that since there is evil in the world, accidents, disease, disasters that are also in contrast to the idea of Divine Mercy, the Devil and witches fall into that category too. But in each case we note that at this point of argument the writers simply assert a given truth that they dare not attack or that they think beyond speculation. And according to both views, the demonological discussion attains the quality of a type of theodicy, that is, an attempt to explain evil as necessary part of the world. As mentioned above, Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) is a central figure when one maps the seventeenth-century discourse on the supernatural.10 With Thomas Sprat, Glanvill was one of the apologists of the Royal Society against Henry Stubbe’s attacks. A university-trained Anglican divine, he became a Christian apologist. Glanvill attempted to fuse mechanical philosophy and Neo-Platonism to create a synthesis of philosophy and Anglicanism in the form of an Anglican natural theology. Glanvill’s attack on atheism is the result of the materialist interpretation of mechanical philosophy as formulated by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan in 1651 (cf. Jobe, 346). Hill notes, “in 1664 Joseph Glanvill was anxious to differentiate the mechanic philosophy of the Royal Society from the mechanic atheism of the radicals” (1986: 287). Glanvill attacked both the materialism of the new mechanical philosophy and, on the other side, the interpretation of magic and occult sciences as “valid parts of a natural philosophy” (Jobe, 351), as was held by mystical chemists. In Scepsis Scientifica (1665), Glanvill uses sceptical arguments for ignorance, which he applies to sceptical positions themselves. Thus, in terms of method he presents something of a reductio ad absurdum, using sceptical methods against scepticism itself. By this method he forces the reader into accepting that questions of faith remain a matter of belief. In his Dedication to the slightly earlier The Vanity of Dogmatizing of 1661 he says “Confidence in 9

Cf. Webster, John, chap. V, pp. 97f., chap. IX, pp. 183-197.

10 Glanvill’s main works are The Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661, Scepsis Scientifica, 1665, A Blow at Modern Sadducism, 1666, and Plus Ultra, 1668 (Glanvill wrote Plus Ultra as a supplement to Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society, 1667); Sadducism Triumphatus, 1681 (posthumously). He also edited a collection of essays that restated the key points of his philosophy Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion in 1676 (cf. Burns, DNB).

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uncertainties, is the greatest enemy to what is certain; and were I a Sceptick, I’de plead for Dogmatizing: For the way to bring men to stick to nothing, is confidently to perswade them to swallow all things.” As argued in chapter one, Glanvill was interested in applying a Cartesian sceptical method to questions of the reliability of the senses, of the truth of our perception and experience. Moreover, within the discourse of the supernatural Glanvill is conspicuous in that he tries to invert the sceptical method to grant the possibility of witchcraft and the reality of spirits.11 As Moody Prior observes: “It will seem not a little astonishing at first that the author of a clever treatise on scepticism and certainty, of several vigorous defences of the Royal Society and of the principles of the ‘new science,’ of sermons based on the best rationalistic and latitudinarian principles, […] should at the same time also have written this spirited defence of a decaying superstition” (1932: 167). In retrospect Glanvill would appear to belong to the avant-garde of his day, and his defence of witchcraft seems in contradiction to his progressiveness. But, as Prior says, to Glanvill, there was no contradiction (167f.). Glanvill’s friendship with Henry More, the Cambridge Neo-Platonist, was formative for his work. In his early The Vanity of Dogmatising Glanvill embraced Descartes’ philosophy and sceptical method. Later on, he moved away from the Cartesian position which was due to More’s influence, as is pointed out by Jackson Cope (1956: 64). As a polemicist, Glanvill not only engaged in the controversy on the Royal Society, but also in the debate about witchcraft with John Webster, which we will discuss below. Glanvill’s work on witchcraft and demonology also follows More’s philosophy in major points (Cope, ibid.). Both More and Glanvill felt that in order to counter the combined threats of scepticism and atheism one must find positive proof of the supernatural. However, God is conceived of as the eternal author and law of the universe and as such beyond our grasp. As Cope summarizes, Glanvill wrote “the great Restoration paradox: in order that God may be known he must be pushed outside the universe” (49). Therefore, the only proof that may be positively attained is not the divine but the demonic. In this, Glanvill and More agreed (Jobe, 346f.).

11 Cf. James Sharpe (2001: 78f.). Sharpe comments that “Glanvill’s book [Sadducism Triumphatus] demonstrated that at the time of its writing there was no necessary compartmentalisation between religion and science, while it is remarkable in using what the age would have regarded as scientific method in demonstrating the existence of witchcraft and of the spirit world more generally”.

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2.5 T HE Q UESTION

OF

E VIDENCE

In his History of the Novel, Michael McKeon discusses the discourse on the supernatural and points out that in the 17th century, there is a shift from metaphysics and theology to epistemology (83). What this means is that the process of coming to a knowledge of truth will be understood according to a tacitly assumed metaphor of visual sense perception, so that knowing something will consist in having it ‘in mind’ and knowing it well will require that we refine the capacity of our ideas of the accurate, inner representation of external objects. Thus the psychology of the knower, and of his sources, will become paramount.” (ibid.)

Reading McKeon, we can summarize that the discourse on the supernatural builds on a correspondence theory of truth, with the given assertion that sensory evidence may be provided. The problem is that the argument will always be circular. As McKeon points out with the example of Glanvill, “despite the supernatural ends of his treatise, divine providence is finally, for Glanvill, an immensely compelling but empty truth, in perpetual need for objective ‘fact’ to fill it with substance” (87). Consequently, Glanvill refers to witchcraft to provide evidence. Witchcraft is tangible experience and as such indubitable. For both defenders and deniers of the possibility of witchcraft, experimental proof was paramount (Jobe, 345). Moody Prior further points out that the usual proof on which seventeenth-century natural scientists relied for the existence of spirit was of a negative and indirect character: by indicating the inadequacy of explanations of physical phenomena which considered only matter and the laws of motion, certain scientists allowed room for inference concerning the possible part played by immaterial substance. Glanvill saw no reason… why scientists could not with great profit conduct direct investigations into the operations of spirit itself (182).

Witchcraft itself is explained in terms of theories of the supernatural, because these theories propose a world of spirits, both benevolent and malevolent, and of differing degrees of intelligence, which explain all sorts of phenomena. It is circular reasoning proposed by Glanvill, More and others in order to give people tangible proof of the divine. Indeed, it is an odd movement of thinking to defend demonology as an avenue to resolve the problem of the regress of justification and to argue that demonology leads to theism; and as will be discussed below,

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this was not lost on Defoe. But as Stuart Clark points out, witchcraft belief and witchcraft knowledge should be distinguished (155f.). Glanvill has an invested interest in showing that witchcraft and ghost beliefs are plausible and even true, because he follows his ulterior motive to counter atheism and a misconceived scepticism. Glanvill develops his spiritual demonology in response to a request from his friend Robert Hunt, who was confronted with a witchcraft trial as a judge in 1664. In 1666, he publishes his letter to Hunt as Some Philosophical Considerations touching Witches and Witchcraft. The fourth edition of 1668 is expanded and also includes the “Demon of Tedworth” account; it appears under the title A Blow at Modern Sadducism (cf. Moody Prior, 187; Sharpe 2001: 78). According to Jobe, Saducism Triumphatus first appears in 1681. It combines the existing tract with a new collection of stories. Glanvill having passed away a year earlier, it is Henry More who mainly edits and finishes Saducism Triumphatus (Jobe, 349). As A Blow at Modern Sadducism, Saducism Triumphatus is quite popular and goes into several editions. The fourth and fifth editions are published in 1724 and 1726. Incidentally, Defoe writes his first supernatural tract in 1726, which may partly explain why he refers specifically to Glanvill in History of Apparitions. In his account of a ghost haunting Glanvill observes: For we know not any thing of the world we live, but by experiment, and the Phaenomena; and there is the same way of speculating immaterial nature, by extraordinary Events and Apparitions, which possibly might be improved to notices not contemptible, were there a Cautious, and Faithful History made of those certain and uncommon appearances. At least it would be a [illegible]ending evidence against Sadducism to which the present Age is so unhappily disposed, and a sensible Argument of our Immortality. (“The Demon of Tedworth”, pp. 116-17, Glanvill’s emphases)

Unlike other supporters of the possibility of witchcraft (for instance, John Cotta) he uses the so-called reality of witchcraft to demonstrate a solution to the epistemological puzzles of demonic agency. Still, Glanvill’s argument presents an image of the divine dangerously close to Manichaeism. The possible existence of witchcraft and the alleged power of witches or of the devil through witches raises the question how the devil could have this kind of power and control, since this would seem to upset the providential order. Indeed, it is exactly this hesitation about the implications of the witches’ alleged powers that is adopted by those who oppose the possibility of witchcraft. From Reginald Scot to Webster and Francis Hutchinson, all argue that it is not possible for any person to have this kind of power. Crucially, they

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also point out that the victims of the witches in fact suffer from diseases, which have natural rather than supernatural explanations. Most tracts recount one or more stories featuring apparitions of ghosts, demons or angels, on the one hand, and witchcraft or demonic contracts, on the other hand. Entertaining the audience is not the primary aim, however (this is a distinguishing feature in regard to the contemporary popular literature consisting of single-sheet pamphlets). Nor do they try to terrorise or horrify the readers, even if people living through such a supernatural or preternatural experience report being frightened. Glanvill tells the story of the haunted house without any trace of fear or terror; he even reports that people – including himself – went there from all over the country to see it happening12 (“Palpable Evidence of Spirits and Witchcraft”, see n. above). Thus, such a preternatural occurrence has the quality of a curiosity or wonder, and not of some gothic horror. Somewhat gloatingly, Webster in his reply to Glanvill does not fail to point out that Glanvill’s “drummer story” is ridiculous. Still, the idea that such apparition stories are absurd and ridiculous underlines their status as a curiosity rather than a thrill. Each story has to be tested for its truth, which means that there are grounds for a rational belief in the reality of the fact of the story. Glanvill credited the drummer story to be true. He argues that absurdity is the best proof for a story: In the general, the more absurd and unaccountable these actions seem, the greater confirmations they are to me of the truth of those Relations, and the reality of what the Objectors would destroy. For these circumstances being exceeding unlikely judging by the measure of common belief, ’tis the greater probability they are not fictitious; for the contrivers of Fictions use to form them as near as they can conformably to the most unsuspected realities, endeavouring to make them look as like truth as is possible in the main supposals, though withal they make them strange in the circumstance. (“A Philosophical Endeavour in the Defence of the Being of Witches” in A Blow at Modern Sadducism, p. 11; Glanvill’s italics, my emphases underscored)

12 Glanvill included a story about a haunted house in A Blow at Modern Sadducism in 1668. Later editions also include the account. The full title reads “Palpable Evidence of Spirits and Witchcraft: In an Account of the Fam’d Disturbance by the Drummer; In the House of M. Mompesson. With Another Modern and Certain Relation, In Two Letters, One to the Right Honourable William Brereton; The other to the Learned Dr. Henry More, D.D. London, Printed by E. Cotes for James Collins at the Kings Head in Westminster Hall, 1668.”

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Glanvill’s evidentialism rests on the strength of circumstances, which need to be “unaccountable”. It is worth noting that he distinguishes “unaccountable” from “strange”, by which he defends his point of view against the insinuation that he might have fallen for a fictitious story. His main argument for credibility is however the presence of several witnesses, as in the case of the drummer story. But Glanvill encountered opposition to his views on witchcraft and his spiritual demonology.13 Glanvill’s tract A Blow at modern Saducism and Webster’s reply to it is now known as the Glanvill-Webster debate. In his The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft of 1677, which he wrote in answer to Glanvill’s “A Blow at Modern Sadducism” and which is now known as part of the witchcraft debate between Glanvill and Webster, Webster bemoans the fact that many contributors to the debate on witchcraft were not careful in regard to their reasoning. He recommends that the “Experimental Philosophy” and the “Logical, Methodical, and Formal ways of the Academies” should be used to avoid confusion: What is more necessary and commendable for those that treat of any controverted point in Writing or in other Disputations, than a clear and perspicuous Method, a right and exact stating of the Question in doubt, defining or describing the terms that are or may be equivocal, and dividing the whole into its due and genuine parts, distinguishing of things one from another, limiting things that are too general, and explaining of everything that is doubtful? (Chap. II, p. 20)

Webster’s point is that as a subject of disagreement witchcraft is as worthy of thorough investigation as any other subject being discussed by educated writers. Moreover, by emphasizing that witchcraft should be treated “scientifically” or according to the recognised achievements in science and philosophy, Webster also implies that the debates and disagreements concerning the new sciences inform the witchcraft debate. Thus, in their controversy one can see a shift from the debate of the law to the question whether or not there is certainty of scientific knowledge of any form human possession of supernatural powers, i.e. witchcraft and magic, and of the supernatural world in general. 13 There were several major participants in the debate on witchcraft and the supernatural. Glanvill’s viewpoints found support with Dr. Henry More, of Cambridge, and Richard Baxter. The latter mentions in his Of the Immortality of the Soul that Henry More at least had a hand in Glanvill’s tract on witchcraft (Sadducism). Later however, Glanvill and Baxter would differ significantly in their theology. Henry More’s An Antidote Against Atheism compared with Glanvill’s Philosophical Considerations Concerning the Being of Witches, by contrast, shows the close relationship between the two.

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The differences can partly be explained theologically. As mentioned before Glanvill was a latitudinarian Anglican, whereas Webster was a radical Protestant. It is possible to read their debate as a continuation of the religious differences between the two groups (Jobe 344). Partly, the debate also reflects the distinctions between the different attitudes toward science. Thus, Glanvill, who had adopted a strongly empirical stance and subscribed to a thorough application of a Cartesian method, accepted witchcraft as possible. In opposition to his point of view, Webster denied the possibility of witchcraft but believed in occult sciences. Jobe argues that Webster considered Glanvill’s view on witchcraft as “an attempt to revive old charges of diabolical magic once hurled at Hermes Trismegistus, Paracelsus, Raymond Lull, and Cornelius Agrippa and thus thwart the inquiries of contemporary investigators into nature’s secrets” (346). Both writers recognise the significance of empirical proof and both acknowledge the relevance of the imagination as a reason for error and false impressions and memories (i.e. non-pathological delusions). Glanvill claims and this is the centre-piece of his argument on witchcraft that if he can show just one story to be true, all of them must be true – that cannot be refuted –, and more significantly still that the truth of these accounts can be shown on circumstantial evidence.14 This means that if a witness of good reputation believes that someone is a witch, his or her testimony to this effect will be enough to have that person tried. Webster’s strategy of refuting Glanvill is to question his sources, arguing that only the Scriptures and reason should count (The Displaying of Witchcraft, chap. IV, pp. 44-53). Webster then continues by arguing why modern authors should not be credited: “…take Mr. Glanvil For all, in his own words: That this being matter of fact, is only capable of the evidence of authority and sense: and by both these, the being of Witches and Diabolical Contracts, is most abundantly confirmed’. To which we shall give this smart Reply. Not to make the Proposition universal, generally to deny the evidence of authority and sense; no, far be it from me to run into that wild and senseless absurdity, which were in a manner to destroy the credibility of all humane testimony… (chap. IV, p.53-4)

14 Cf. Sharpe (2001). Sharpe also notes that Glanvill is prepared to “regard the case histories of witchcraft and other occult phenomena … as matters of objective, ‘scientific’ fact”. Following Daston’s argument one should however not use “objective” lightly as a recognised category in seventeenth-century thought (Daston 2000 and 2001).

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While Webster attacks Glanvill for defending reports as evidence when they are against reason and religious orthodoxy (i.e. against the Scriptures as last authority), he moreover criticizes the readiness to accept well-known stories for real rather than rely on first-hand experience. Accusing Glanvill of “folly” and “pride” “to bring in idle and vain conjectures, where verity and certainty are expected”, Webster makes the point in case arguing that “we must know of Mr. Glanvil, how he comes to know that the Devils sucking of the Witches bodies is a truth, or ever was proved to be matter for fact, who were by and present that were ear or eye-witnes of it” (chap. V, p. 81). While the subject itself seems arcane and somewhat absurd – Webster after all ridicules Glanvill for accepting the folk belief in the devil’s sucking on witches – Webster presents yet another time the list of issues, i.e. the acquisition of knowledge, certainty or truth, proof, and testimony, that aligns his discussion of witchcraft and the supernatural with the basic concerns of epistemology. Webster voices his doubts and hesitation in the following epigrammatic sentence: “A thing that never was proved ought never to be believed” (p. 81). Shapin argues that the scientific revolution depended on the willingness to trust reports and insights from people who for example studied plants more closely or had travelled far abroad (1994: 3-41). The debate between Glanvill and Webster is arguably as much about the reliability of reports on any topic and the method on which a particular insight is based, as it is about the supernatural itself. When Webster challenges Glanvill he puts his finger on the sore spot. On the one hand, he forces his audience to question the certainty of traditional folk beliefs. On the other hand, he coerces the audience into acknowledging their own readiness to accept hearsay stories.

2.6 D EFOE ’ S T REATMENT OF E VIDENCE OF THE S UPERNATURAL That Defoe should explicitly refer to Glanvill and not to Webster is rather intriguing; after all, Webster was Glanvill’s opponent in the witchcraft debate. Taken at face value, Defoe’s references to Glanvill in History of Apparitions would indicate that he agrees with Glanvill. However, his rather dismissive tone not only suggests an ambiguity about the subject matter itself, but also a certain ambivalence toward Glanvill (HA, 239). Still, as Burns points out, one of Glanvill’s lines of argumentation is that simply because there are stories about apparitions or witches that are clearly made up, it does not mean that there are no

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such instances of true apparitions or real witchcraft.15 In this regard, Glanvill’s work surely constitutes a significant influence on Defoe’s supernatural tracts, especially when Defoe assesses evidential stories, even if Defoe criticises Glanvill implicitly or explicitly whenever he mentions him. In History of the Devil, Defoe tells us “To this Purpose gave he [the Devil] them [witches and magicians] Power, if we may believe old Glanville, Baxter, Hicks, and other learn’d Consultors of Oracles, to walk invisible, to fly in the Air, ride upon Broom-sticks, and other Wooden Gear, to interpret Dreams, answer Questions, betray Secrets, to talk (Gibberish) the universal Language, to raise Storms, sell Winds, bring up Spirits, disturb the Dead, and torment the Living, with a thousand other needful Tricks to amuse the World, keep themselves in Veneration, and carry on the Devil’s Empire in the World” (Part II, chapter 9, 234). The passage reiterates Defoe’s dismissive attitude towards Glanvill. Defoe’s concept of evil and evil power is closer to Gifford. – The narrator of History of the Devil catalogues a list of abilities and practices traditionally associated with witchcraft, especially for instance the selling of winds. That the devil might be able to do all of these things is not denied, but the devil cannot act against the providential order. – The brief catalogue of witchcraft includes some abilities that are associated with prophetic and angelic figures. The criminal potential is clear. Thus, it is inherent in the entire enterprise and scope of this “discourse” that it is itself subject to severe epistemological scepticism, that is, its line of argument needs to be questioned. But as Keith Thomas observes, it is “the optimistic conviction that it would one day be possible to uncover the natural causes of those events which still remain mysterious” (Thomas 691) that underlies the “sceptical attitude”. Given time, discovery and scientific advancement inexplicable and strange phenomena would soon be part of nature as it is rationalised by man. While Defoe does not follow Glanvill in all instances, he recognised the circularity of justification and preferred to dramatize the unknowable in poetic terms, as the episode from Moll Flanders described below demonstrates. A world of supernatural possibilities in which faith is a matter of knowledge and science is not readily distinguished from magic is a world in which fact and probability are considered as much as reliable guidelines as are inspiration and 15 According to Burns, Glanvill’s method is to show that if one can prove a particular story to be untrue, one has only said it is fabricated, made up, even fraudulent, or perhaps product of an overly imaginative mind, but one has not shown that there is no such thing as a miracle: “It is invalid to argue ‘that because there are some cheats and impostures that therefore there are no realities’” (49).

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awe.16 While playing on wonder and awe, Defoe’s Moll Flanders adds yet another level of meaning. The supernatural dimension here serves to assure the reader of the truth and genuineness, but also the danger, of the desire and passion felt by the protagonist and her lover. It encompasses the protagonist’s emotional experience, and shows how the narrator negotiates her emotional debts. Moll Flanders tells us that there is one true love in her life, Jem the highwayman-gentleman. As both are pressed for money, they decide it is time for them to go their separate ways. Like her, he is capable of shifting appearances and social roles, and like her, he is bent on making a fortune in the world. They split up on the road, at an inn. Leaving her behind, Jem writes a letter in which he apologizes for his behaviour and tells Moll that he has put some money in her pocket: “…Forgive me, my Dear! I ask you Pardon with the greatest Sincerity; I am the most miserable of Men, in having deluded you: I have been so happy to Possess you, and am now so wretch’d as to be forc’d to fly from you …” (MF, p. 121, my emphases underscored). The fact that he gives her the money convinces Moll that he is truly sincere. The letter introduces the actual “supernatural” occurrence about to happen. Its language is curiously ambiguous, and centres on expressions of compulsion and disappointment. To delude would mean as much to deceive as to disappoint here. In addition, it stresses that deception involves manipulating someone else’s judgment, just as it also highlights the mental state of being deceived rather than the more general state of having been cheated (which may involve crime). Furthermore, the context of their separation dictates an obvious meaning of “possession”. It means to be married, i.e. in a fixed and acknowledged state of relationship. It certainly implies sexual consummation. To possess moreover means to own something. But the verb has yet darker resonances: it may mean demonic possession. The term neatly indicates his passion and desire for Moll, which, since it is to neither characters’ advantage, has an ill effect on both their situations. The lover’s pseudo-demonic language is the vehicle of the description of their passion, which is equally destructive and overpowering. Once Moll fully realises the extent of her own passion for her lover, she starts crying his name. I eat but little, and after Dinner I fell into a vehement Fit of crying, every now and then, calling him by his Name, which was James, O Jemy! I said, come back, come back, I’ll give you all I have; I’ll beg, I’ll starve with you, and thus I run Raving about the Room 16 Hill, Christopher. “Science and Magic”. The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill: Volume Three: People and Ideas in 17th Century England. The Harvester Press, 1986. 274-299.

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several times … it was near Dusk in the Evening … when to my unspeakable Surprize he comes back into the Inn … (p. 122)

Moll describes her own emotions in terms of a limited set of gestures, i.e. “raving about”, “walking about”, “cry’d”, and summarises her state with “I was in the greatest Confusion imaginable” (ibid.). What then follows remains without explanation. Her lover tells her that he came back because he heard her voice calling out to him: “I Laught at him; my Dear says he, do not Laugh, for depend upon it, I heard your Voice as plain as you hear mine now; if you please, I’ll go before a Magistrate and make an Oath of it; I then began to be amaz’d and surpris’d, and indeed frighted” (ibid.). Clearly, amazement, surprise, fear and confusion but also incredulous laughter are part of the emotional makeup of the scene, but like the narration of the supernatural episode itself, the vocabulary remains strangely repetitive. Certainly, Moll’s and Jem’s experience shows Moll that they were mistaken to leave each other. The language of demonic possession is replaced by speechlessness. Nonetheless, the episode remains as puzzling to the reader as it is to Moll. Even if read as a moment of intense personal revelation, and even if amazement and wonder may be the first step to conversion, the episode remains strangely free of interpretation on Moll’s part. It is not a moment of moral contemplation, nor is it a moment of conversion. It does not establish her guilty nature as an adulteress, any more than it constitutes a higher spiritual insight. Rather, her condition is due to her desire for her lover and her regret at having parted with him. All the episode seems to provide is strangeness and amazement. Yet, it also proposes a world in which such preternatural wonders are possible. Moll’s experience suggests that her state of distraction was necessary to establish a supernatural connection with her lover. Thus, what might be read as a kind of mental derangement in Moll’s character, her state of confusion and her raving, attain a different meaning. It puts her in touch with the supernatural and inspires wonder and fear. Indeed, it leaves her almost speechless. Since the episode receives no further interpretation, it remains unexplained at that point in the narrative, and also unchallenged. What prevents it from being a sentimental twist in the narrative such as the reader encounters at the end of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre roughly 140 years later is that the protagonist has no wish to “reach out” to her lover nor any idea that such a supernatural connection might exist. And, indeed, such ignorance is one of the criteria for truth in Defoe’s own supernatural tracts. Still, the episode in itself reveals a conception of reality that provides a specific subtext to the narrative, which, if part of the world of the novel, allows for a moment of insight that is beyond the grasp of the narrator.

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Several questions present themselves immediately. First of all, one might ask how to read such an episode in a narrative that is otherwise praised for its verisimilitude. This initial query leads to the next question, which does not address the reasons so much as the origin of such ideas about the supernatural. Defoe himself with his supernatural tracts encourages the reader to draw parallels between Moll’s narrative and the factual discourse on the supernatural. Moll’s awe and wonder are not only the appropriate and indeed expected response to their strange experience, it is also the type of response that she shares with philosophers and polemicists who dedicate themselves to supernatural and preternatural phenomena within seventeenth-century thinking and writing. But Moll’s reaction does not prompt her to analyse her experience, whereas the supernaturalist philosophers appear to feel compelled to study such accounts as Moll’s. The episode therefore enacts rather than argues Defoe’s implicit critique of the sceptical challenge. Moll’s passionate response invites the reader to view the passage as a sublime experience. In another of Defoe’s novels, Roxana, like Moll, lives through a visionary experience that could be described as an encounter with the sublime, as it evokes a passionate emotional response on the subject’s part without her being able to understand what has happened. Contrary to Moll’s experience, it leaves Roxana shocked and terrified. As with Moll, the episode occurs when two lovers part. However, Roxana and her partner, the Jeweller, do not realise that they see each other for the last time. The Jeweller will be robbed and murdered by highwaymen. Before he leaves, Roxana has a vision of the Jeweller as a skeleton, then, she sees him covered in blood. She implores him not to go away, but he does not take her seriously: I star’d at him, as if I was frighted, for I thought all his Face look’d like a Death’s-Head; and then, immediately, I thought I perceiv’d his Head all Bloody; and then his Cloaths look’d Bloody too; and immediately it all went off, and he look’d as he really did; immediately I fell a-crying, and hung about him, My Dear said I, I am frighted to Death; you shall not go, depend on it, some Mischief will befall you; I did not tell him how my vapourish Fancy had represented him to me, that I thought was not proper (88)

As Roxana tells the story, the chronology of her tale is confused; apparently before she has the vision, she is already terrified of letting him go. So, it is not quite clear, if in fact her fear produced her vision. On the other hand, somewhat later in her time in Paris, a Jewish merchant suspects her of having had a hand in the Jeweller’s death. She admits herself that she profited from his decease. However this may be, Roxana herself attributes her vision to her “vapourish

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Fancy”. She distances herself from the possibility of a real vision, which would, like Moll’s experience, have been an encounter with the sublime. Such a revelation is, however, not possible in Roxana’s world of guilt. That the unregenerate should not be able to share such a view of the transcendent, would be in keeping with a concept of damnation that sees the cause of damnation in the subject’s own choice and responsibility. Reading the novels with an eye on the supernatural, the two episodes in Roxana and in Moll Flanders lie at the centre of any analysis. Ostensibly, Defoe’s supernatural tracts, as a group, hark back to the debates of the seventeenth century. As mentioned before, Defoe suggests as much by naming Glanvill, who is possibly his most important link to the seventeenthcentury philosophic and scientific context of the debate. It would seem strange however if there was no reference to more current controversies. Certainly, there was a popular demand for such tracts and Defoe was far from the only one writing about the supernatural. Yet, one could argue that Defoe implicitly addresses problems, especially certainty and deception that concern him not because of the discourse on the supernatural but because of other discussions occurring at the time. Indeed, he sees through these topics in his fictions as well as in his tracts. Considering Defoe’s work on the supernatural, one will notice that Defoe relies on an entire framework of reference that he posits as self-evident. He never doubts the truth of a voluntarist theology. He never questions the work of Providence. Moreover, he accepts the ontological possibility of a world of spirits without entering into a debate about substance or space. His work is thus always part of a physico-theology as established by Robert Boyle and Richard Baxter without in fact debating its questions. Defoe adopts quite consistently an empiricist approach: to evidence, to facts and observations. However, his empiricism is also the field, where his interest in supernaturalism, as represented by Henry More and Joseph Glanvill, becomes most formative: the empiricist cannot deal with metaphysical questions beyond the tangible material world. Despite his misgivings about some of Glanvill’s ideas, Defoe follows his example and allows his ontological assumptions to take precedence over his empiricism. Thus, he can write two fictions, Robinson Crusoe and A Journal of the Plague Year, in which the challenges of the empirical world are pressed upon the protagonist, and in which, not least of all, the protagonists pursue a line of action that acts out a pragmatic trial-and-error empiricism; and yet in both fictions, the empirical world is displaced in favour of a spiritual interpretation of events.

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2.7 D EFOE ’ S L INES OF ARGUMENTATION IN HIS S UPERNATURAL T RACTS Arguably, Defoe’s supernatural tracts can be regarded, at least in part, as a continuation of the debates of the 1710s, in which he participated. In his biography of Defoe, Novak notes that Defoe actively took part in what Novak calls the “sincerity crisis” (520-525). Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, wrote A Preservation against the Practices of the Non-Jurors in 1716, in which he argues that a person’s sincerity when confessing his religious beliefs may not be disputed (Novak, 521). Hoadly’s tract was a reply to George Hickes who had attacked the Anglican clergy. Since Hoadly defended the “essential individuality and privacy of belief” (Novak, 522), Defoe as an orthodox dissenter found himself agreeing with the Bishop. As Novak remarks the story does not end there but the event gives Defoe occasion for several tracts and a contribution to Applebee’s Journal of 18 March 1721 in favour of accepting the sincerity of confessions of faith. At the same time, Defoe attacks deism and free-thinking. The reason for this is that the “Bangorian” debate coincided with the meeting of Dissenting ministers at Salters’ Hall in April 1719, where a majority of the ministers could not reconcile signing a “document affirming their faith in the Trinity” with their conscience (Novak, 524). These events clearly influence Defoe’s supernatural tracts where he attacks deists and free-thinkers straightforwardly, as for example in HD, where he attacks Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism (Novak, 525). But while the sincerity of personal religious beliefs justifies nonconformity, which indeed entails economic and educational consequences drastic enough to encourage conformity, sincerity and its opposite, deception, raise more general questions. To question someone’s sincerity is an expression of doubt and uncertainty. But if one wanted to assert the value of sincerity and trust, then one would have to answer those hesitations. The supernatural tracts display the same concern; and it would appear that the sincerity debate informs the supernatural tracts. Defoe’s main strategy of argumentation in his three major tracts, HA, SM and PHD, is first to offer a reading of relevant scriptural passages from mainly the Old Testament, and then to look at modern instances where visions, apparitions and preternatural abilities had been claimed. The New Testament as it tells of the Messianic fulfilment of the Covenant is never the object of the discussion of supernaturalism. Defoe will only cite the New Testament as evidence of true miracles. While Defoe refers to Greek and Roman antiquity for further reference, he mainly speculates about the definition of magic, supernatural powers in persons and religion with the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Egyptians. Peter

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Elmer in his introduction to A System of Magick is certainly correct in his assessment that what Defoe does not do is to actively engage in the theological and scientific debates of the 17th-century (2005: 6). While influenced by the scientific paradigms of 17th-century thinking on the supernatural, he does not go into the philosophical problems related to the discourse. For instance, Defoe’s definition of “spirit” in HA demonstrates that Defoe goes to great lengths to offer an elaborate model of a “world of spirits” of differing “degrees”. By differing degree, Defoe builds on the idea of a Chain of Being, from spirit or soul depending on body, to “unembodied” spirits, to angelic spirits. But he does not engage in a debate on the substance of spirit or matter. To understand his tracts, though, one has to accept that Defoe thought of spirits as being part of the order of things in the physical world of our existence. One also notes that in this point, Defoe disagrees with Locke’s sceptical view that the ability to perceive spirits is beyond the human mind (see the brief discussion above; Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Chap. 3, sect. 27, p. 454). Similarly, Defoe urges his readers to take their dreams seriously (for example in Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe). Furthermore, Defoe insists that a real vision or apparition will take place in day-light, and not be a nighttime experience (HA, p. 78). There is no indication, though, that Defoe thought that a person needs to have some extraordinary ability in order to perceive or experience a “supernatural” encounter. On the contrary, he denies that humans have preternatural abilities, as witches are credited with. Still, according to Defoe, ordinary human beings can indeed have some intimation or inspiration of the world above and beyond our physical limitations. This idea punctures the boundaries between natural and supernatural. Thus, Defoe’s narrative persona in History of Apparitions first begins by asserting his didactic intentions in claiming that his aim is to give his subject matter the proper definition and to allocate it its proper place: “Between our Ancestors laying too much stress upon them, and the present Age endeavouring wholly to explode and despise them, the World seems hardly ever to have come at a right Understanding about them” (HA, 39). The preface to HA makes clear that the narrator does not accept flat denial of apparitions nor does he approve of blind faith. His subject should be treated as a possible object of knowledge, in the sense that knowledge is belief held with rational certainty. As the narrator tells us he is surprised that “Satan does not think fit to justify the Reality of his Being, by appearing to such [the skeptics] in some of his first Figures … I doubt not but they would be as full of the Panick as other People” (ibid.). If HA has an ulterior motive, it is to argue for the idea that it is lack of knowledge, education

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and critical challenge that leads to fear and terror. Given the “right Understanding” there may be certainty rather than fear and panic. The assertion of the ontological truth of the supernatural is not only a matter of faith. It is also the one resolution of the circular argument inherent in the supernatural stories. Like his predecessors, Defoe renders such stories with the point in mind to prove their truth or falsehood. And like them, he does so by firmly rooting them within their own historical context (cf. McKeon 85ff.). An example would be the story of the two brothers in love with the same girl, who were kept from killing each other by an apparition they share of their father (HA, 198-211). Instead of authenticating his story by an editorial comment, the narrator makes the following meta-discursive statement: “But my Business is not to moralize upon the Story, but to relate the Fact” (203). What McKeon calls the “historicity” of the stories might also be called their evidential quality (87). McKeon’s discussion relates the supernatural genre to the genre of romance, which as he points out, is criticized in Defoe’s conduct books, and he comments: “what is striking about these complementary definitions is the implication that ‘romantic’ mediation fails to reach spiritual things because it is insufficiently historical, that ‘the Invention of the Author’ is to be condemned not so much for emulating divine authorship as for claiming (but lack) historicity” (89). Given the correctness of this observation, one can add that it is not just historical fact that makes the difference. Arguably, Defoe adopts a pragmatic stance toward story-telling in that his stories, especially his fictions, are about what may happen when a particular set of mind, that is, a particular set of beliefs and convictions, is allowed to act on its inclinations. This dimension of Defoe’s work would constitute a moral interpretation of Defoe’s theory of fiction. One could argue, then, that the evidential stories all share the same problem. They rest on the reliability of the person giving the testimony. Defoe will in most cases not recite a story from his own experience (even though there are a few told from the narrator’s perspective). As mentioned before, he uses a narrative persona who acts as editor and arbiter, which gives us immediate access to the meta-textual discourse. Furthermore, the narrators tend to use a formula, as for example: “I am as well satisfied as I am of the best grounded matter of fact” (Mrs Veal). In this case, we have to rely on the narrator’s judgment rather than decide ourselves. In HA, a more striking example may be found: I have another Account received from a particular Acquaintance in a neighbouring Nation. I could name Persons and Places in a more exact manner to these Accounts; but some Reasons of State forbid us at this time to enter into the Circumstances of Families… as

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this Apology will be allow’d to be just, I expect it will be accepted by the Reader … (HA, 97)

The story he then tells is about a robbery of the family’s home. The robbers, a gang of fourteen, were scared away by an apparition. The problem with the story is that when read carefully, it is not clear who actually witnessed the apparition, since according to the account, all the robbers were either dead or managed to escape (HA, 98-105). The narrator then goes on to his next story, introducing it as follows: “I shall give you another Story out of more Authentick Records” (105). In some cases, the narrator does not cite the source of his story, but rather insists that it has never before been published, as with the story of the two brothers seeing their father appear to them (mentioned above). Alleged authenticity is only one part of the evidentialist endeavour. Each story serves to elucidate a point of the “system” the narrator is trying to prove. It is “empirical evidence.” Earlier in HA, the narrator refers to his own activity as judge of the stories, stating that “I refer it to any impartial Judgment to weigh every Circumstance of this Account (the Truth of which I have not the least Reason to question) and tell me, by what Powers, and from what Influence could these things be perform’d, if there were no invisible World…”(194). This may be read as a kind of invocation of the sceptical scientist. McKeon argues that “the materialist language of empiricism does not so much mediate sacred truth as comprehend it with in its own triumphant epistemology” (87). But this passage from HA suggests a degree of ironic detachment from the language of empiricism that allows Defoe to save the ontological truth he defends. Moreover, in the case of the robbers’ story in HA, the narrator tells the reader that he included the story for the sake of entertainment. Yet, in the most other cases, the narrator discusses not just the veracity of the story, but deduces his claims on the world of spirits from the example in the manner of a proof, saying that one could learn points one and two from the story and therefore conclude what the role of spirits is in this world: From hence (supposing the Reality of the Story) it necessarily follows that a Spirit or invisible Being, let it be call’d what we please, may take upon it the Shape, Face, Voice of any living Person, whom it pleases to represent, without the knowledge, Consent, or Concurrence of the Persons so represented, in any manner whatsoever. (211)

One cannot help noticing that the narrator avoids the question of the “truth” of the story, even though, or perhaps especially because, he insists to be the first

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one to publish it. Furthermore, the jocular use of the brackets suggest that the narrator is not taking the “scientific” approach quite seriously.

2.8 S UMMARY To conclude, then, the discourse on the supernatural reflects the changing concepts of nature. Similarly, one can argue that the literature of the long eighteenth century reflects the same changes. As Ian Watt notes, “the novel arose in the modern period, a period whose general intellectual orientation was most decisively separated from its classical and medieval heritage by its rejection … of universals” (The Rise of the Novel 1957: 12). Novelistic narration typically focuses on the individual instance, the “particular, concrete object of sense-perception” (Watt, 11). If the novel as a literary genre is an expression of an increased faith in the individual’s ability to seek and find truth based on his and her own ability to perceive, think and judge, the discourse on the supernatural similarly foregrounds the singularity of the individual’s experience. However, such experience is either called into question in that the universal framework within which the phenomenon is ultimately explained, cannot account for the phenomenon in terms that one can comprehend, or it must be challenged because it remains a singular phenomenon that is not shared by a sufficient number of other individuals. The result is paradoxical. On the one hand, assumptions about supernatural phenomena relies on individual statements, on the other hand, the very endeavour to make a meaningful statement about the supernatural undermines the credibility of such statements. In undermining the reliability of language itself, and by adopting a quasiscientific attitude that is somewhat shaky, Defoe gives the supernatural story doubtful authenticity. Paradoxically, it can be argued that in playing through the problem of representation, the problem of the regress of justification, and by adopting an ironic attitude towards falsification and verification of the stories, Defoe is able to retain the idea of an ontological truth beyond the representation of facts. Consequently, and especially in the fictions, he shifts the evidential story into the realm of anecdote and parable. Furthermore, he detaches the supernatural material from the 17th-century discourse of the supernatural, even though his synthesis of the topic relies on this discourse. This detachment, which is consequent from his general critique of language and his critique of the scientific endeavour of the supernaturalists, enables him to use the supernatural imaginatively in his poetic works, as was seen in the example from Moll Flanders.

Part II: Transformations of the Supernatural: The Power of the Imagination ‘This thing cannot be, Mrs Logan. It is a phantasy of our disturbed imaginations, therefore let us compose ourselves till we investigate this matter farther.’ JAMES HOGG, THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER, P. 99 He therefore that will not give himself up to all the extravagancies of delusion and error, must bring this guide of his light within [i.e. reason] to the trial. JOHN LOCKE, AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, BK. IV, CHAP. XIX, P. 595

3 Defoe’s Play with the “As If”: Fiction, Delusion and Imagination But the divination which springeth from the internal nature of the soul, is that which we now speak of; which hath been made to be of two sorts, primitive and by influxion. Primitive is grounded upon the supposition that the mind, when it is withdrawn and collected into itself and not diffused into the organs of the body, hath some extent and latitude of prenotion; which therefore appeareth most in sleep, in extasies, and near death; and more rarely in waking apprehensions; and is induced and furthered by those abstinences and observances which make the mind most to consist in itself. By influxion is grounded upon the conceit that the mind, as a mirror or glass, should take illumination from the foreknowledge of God and spirits; unto which the same regiment doth likewise conduce. For the retiring of the mind within itself is the state which is most susceptible of divine influxions; save that it is accompanied in this case with a fervency and elevation (which the ancients noted by fury), and not with a repose and quiet , as it is in the other. BACON, THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, BOOK 2, P. 216

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3.1 I NTRODUCTION Defoe’s work arguably displays the paradigmatic changes that are associated with the early Enlightenment. Part of these developments is the scientific revolution with its movement toward a mechanist cosmology, and toward empiricism. Similarly, Defoe’s work, eminently his supernatural tracts, reflects the Cartesian cogito, in that Defoe puts faith in the individual person as a thinking subject, capable of judgment. That judgment may be endangered, mislead, or indeed impaired, is a recurrent theme in Defoe’s novels. Where Defoe refers to the criminal, as he does in Moll Flanders and Roxana, fraud and cheating are the most common forms of deception. However, deception, in the forms of delusion or self-deception, hallucinations and illusions, is a concern for H.F. in Journal of the Plague Year, when he reports the behaviour of the denizens. Moreover, Robinson Crusoe is under constant anxiety to ensure that his experiences are real and not imagined. By introducing dreams and visions – and indeed dream visions – into his novels, Defoe takes over from his thinking on supernatural phenomena not only the material for a new episode, but also a preoccupation with the fallibility of the mind. In this world, the autonomous subject is in constant danger. Dreams and visions are interior. One could argue that, because of their characteristic interiority, they stand for the most subjective experience possible. Furthermore, dreams and visions may express the very moment of spiritual insight. As religious signs, they may be interpreted symbolically. Indebted to the tradition of Puritan religious writing, Defoe offers the reader such interpretation, as has been argued by J. Paul Hunter and George A. Starr. However, in the context of the discourse on the supernatural, Defoe’s treatment of dreams and visions appropriates questions of epistemology to the interpretation of religious symbolism.1 Critics so far have not paid enough attention to the moments in Defoe’s fictions, when the narrators render such extraordinary insights into the spiritual by “as if” constructions. Such constructions, overt or implied, call into question any easy acceptance that it may be possible to glean the supernatural by personal experience. Given that Defoe asserts the human ability to interact with

1

Richard Fumerton notes that “any plausible epistemology must distinguish between questions about the genesis of belief from its epistemic justification. If it is relatively uncontroversial from the perspective of commonsense that we very often rely on information provided by other people, it is far less clear how to construe the nature of the evidential path we need to travel in getting justified belief through reliance on testimony” (2006: 77).

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spirits and the souls of living human beings in the form of intuition and premonition, he apparently contradicts himself, when he moves the visionary experience into the metaphorical by qualifying it by “as if”. However, the contradiction allows Defoe to assert his religious orthodoxy and to subtly lace his supernaturalist cosmology with doubt towards the bold statement that a however occult experience of the supernatural may be real evidence of spiritual beings. Thus, when dreams and visions are told, they are met with questions. In Defoe’s fictions some episodes are under scrutiny and judged to be false or delusionary. Others, however, we are invited to credit as true. Apart from the visions in Roxana and Moll Flanders, we find dreams and pseudo-visions (such as the footprint episode) in Robinson Crusoe. In Journal of the Plague Year, H.F. witnesses so-called visions, but does not himself experience such premonitions. The relevance of his venture into the world of magic and foresight will be discussed in the next chapter. In History of Apparitions, dreams and visions are rendered from second-person perspective, that is, the narrator looks at other persons’ stories. Thus, in the tracts, the rationality of the voice of the narrator contributes to the truth-value of those stories that he believes to be true. A Journal of the Plague Year exhibits a similar pattern of asserting certainty (see discussions in chapters 2 and 4). In Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Roxana, however, the rationality of the narrative voice is not equally sure. Apart from visionary moments, the protagonists also describe states of “raving” and confusion. The vocabulary to describe these states of irrationality is related to the language of enthusiasm, and suggests that such unreason, which results in the silence of their rational voice, jeopardizes the assumption that faith is reasonable. Or else, one would have to argue that all supernatural moments in the narratives are delusionary, as indeed is suggested by the language. One might argue, then, that these fictional episodes upset the order suggested by the discourse on the supernatural, in that they present the separation of faith and reason. Moreover, Robinson Crusoe’s conversion involves a transition from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge by undergoing severe physical and mental hardship, the description of which similarly employs language associated with delusion and enthusiasm. Robinson’s story suggests that “apprehensions” and “vapours” play a vital role in his spiritual life (72f.), and constitute a necessary step in his conversion. Such negotiation of highly subjective experiences of the supernatural as possibly delusional, probably enthusiastic and certainly entailing the recognition of moral duty are part of Defoe’s repertoire of fictional techniques.

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While Defoe never addresses his concept of fiction explicitly, his various comments allow us to approximate his attitude towards fiction. As Max Novak has demonstrated, Defoe combines fiction with some claim of moral insight, which indeed also underlines his indebtedness to the fable for his idea of fiction (cf. Novak 1964: 651f.). The history of the reception of Defoe’s works has been informed by the discussion of the relationship between truth and reality, on the one hand, and the verisimilitude of Defoe’s narrative technique. Fictionalising knowledge is not just a question of plausibility, however, it is also a matter of whether or not it is possible to access or generate new knowledge. As has been argued in the previous chapter, the fable, or in narrative terms, the fabula, regardless of its actual “factuality”, attains its meaning only by a process of deliberation. While one might understand this process of deliberation in terms of Defoe’s grasp on realism or a general theory of narrative, one can also argue that apart from its formally being narration, it represents Defoe’s attempt to reflect on the possibility of knowledge. If there is validity to this claim, we may similarly assume that it represents a reflection on the act of writing as well. As Novak proposes, Defoe’s “theory” of fiction concerns how to appropriate reality into story telling. Similarly, Michael McKeon argues that in Robinson Crusoe Defoe attempted to write fiction so that it would be truth (History of the Novel). Novak firmly places Defoe in the Lockean tradition; and, indeed, he argues convincingly that Defoe had read Locke’s Essay as early 1705 (662). This would mean that Defoe read Locke at approximately the same time when he wrote The Apparition of Mrs Veal, as Novak argues (1983: 1-22), if we accept Defoe’s authorship of Mrs Veal. Defoe’s debt to Locke shows in his acceptance that there should be a preference for direct knowledge of external objects. As a result, Defoe’s “realism” is in fact a kind of narrative empiricism (Novak 1964: 661f.), which has also been argued by Ian Watt and McKeon. However, even if this argument should be correct, it is not true that Defoe wholeheartedly embraced the scepticism implicit in Locke. One may perhaps read Defoe as sharing “the sceptical vision of reality” (Novak 662).2 However, given Defoe’s critique of language, his ambivalence toward the discourse on the supernatural, and his engagement with the representation of knowledge in narrative discourse, it is clear that such scepticism is directed towards the play of the imagination rather than the possibility of a knowledge of external objects. Furthermore, one can attribute Defoe’s hesitations about fiction to the problem of representation. 2

Novak argues that Defoe was “a disciple of Locke” in his “attitude towards reality”. According to Novak, Locke’s influence led Defoe to write “extraordinarily detailed descriptions” which “may be viewed as a method for making ideas more concrete” (1964: 662).

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John Bender argues that Defoe considered “fictionality” a “disease” (1998: 12). His “facts slide easily, through the process of narration, into untruths that erode self-certainty”, Bender suggests (11). If fiction and hypothesis are remarkably similar, their epistemological status differs (Bender ibid.). However, imitating hypothetical thinking and proclaiming fiction a realistic model of the world are not the same thing. Arguably, Defoe’s play with the hypothetical “as if” allows him to elucidate the proneness of the human mind to be manipulated. In other words, Defoe’s scepticism does not address realism or representationalism, but the malleability of human perception. In his work, Defoe allows fact and fiction to interpenetrate. In this deliberately open field of meaning, the power of the imagination is a recurrent topic. In the world of Defoe’s fictions, what is imaginable is credible. Thus, the narrator of Robinson Crusoe plays with the idea of plausibility when he remembers the reaction of his younger self to the unexpected growth of barley on the island, and he can celebrate the intactness of the shipwreck as a gift of divine Providence without questioning the likelihood of such events. Similarly, Moll Flanders ends up marrying her own brother, although the odds of her finding her own family – and of her recognising the parental relationship – are extremely slim. If, in the latter case, Moll’s incestuous marriage gains all the attributes of a demonic manipulation of her life – she strives to avoid the temptation of the comforts of her life with her brother-husband and her mother –, Robinson’s attitude towards unexpected turns of events is to interpret them as divine interventions. Defoe does not limit the use of fictionalised facts and factualised fiction to the supernatural; thus, for instance, he applies the same technique to his use of historical facts and figures in The Journal of the Plague Year. However, the role of the imagination is arguably most obvious, where Defoe transforms the discourse of the supernatural, as we know it from Glanvill, Webster and Scot, into the fictional representation of dreams and visions, thereby offering a fictional representation of mental events. Again, witchcraft trials are crucial symbolically. Textual evidence suggests that Defoe adopted the contemporary philosophical consensus, which located at least part of the problem of self-deception with the ambivalent functions of the imagination, as the retriever of memory as well as the interior representation of reality. Furthermore, in questions of the imagination Defoe’s debt to Joseph Glanvill and John Locke becomes visible. Reading the novels, one realizes that the representation of the supernatural episodes ultimately concern processes of belief formation. Visions and delusions are equally the result of belief formation. Defoe’s language suppresses certain

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possibilities of interpretation by his use of quantifiers. To discuss the role of the imaginary, and delusional, for Defoe’s fiction, we will first look at the term “imagination” within the context of Defoe’s sources and precursors. The imaginary is in opposition to the real (cf. Wolfgang Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre, 1991). Moreover, the imaginary need not be rational. The representation of the imaginary events in Defoe’s tracts and fiction is under the constant pressure to distinguish pathological, enthusiastic or rational representations. One can argue that a vision represents an arbitrary sign, begging for and resisting interpretation, as it may be intensely subjective. Defoe invites the reader to consider visionary moments as part of plot and story, but also as a reflection on fictional representation.

3.2 D ISRUPTIVE I MAGINATION In his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson defines imagination firstly as “fancy; the power of forming ideal pictures; the power of representing things absent to one’s self or others,” giving five citations to elucidate his definition. Apart from John Milton, John Dennis and Alexander Pope, Johnson includes Francis Bacon and Joseph Glanvill. While to Bacon, the imagination is linked to time and existence, Glanvill stresses the relation between object and its representation in the mind: “when we would perceive a material object, our fancies present us with its ideas” (Dictionary, “imagination”, 1.). As Glanvill equates the function of the imagination with the function of sensory perception, he does more than simply assert the instrumental nature of the imagination. He credits it with illusory qualities, as he implies that what the imagination will represent is like the real material object. In quoting Bacon, Johnson, on the other hand, introduces yet another aspect. The imagination is “the representation of an individual thought”. Writing on the role of the imagination in Robinson Crusoe, James Foster suggests that poets and philosophers shared a consensus on the imagination as an instrument of the mind. Thus, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Defoe, and Thomas Hobbes and John Locke agree that “as transforming energy, the imagination becomes potentially a source for projected order or a disruptive impulse driving the mind into chaos” (1992: 184). According to Foster, the “dualistic view of the imagination” as mediator between reason and will or desire turns the imagination into a “transforming energy, associated with desire” (183). However, while it is true that desire seems to be attended by confusion in Defoe’s novels, and that desire finds its expression in the imaginative, the

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ambivalence of the imagination as an instrument of the mind also lies in its function to make sense and order things that are novel to an individual’s experience. Unreliability then seems to be inherent in the imagination as much as the possibility of new insights. Part of the topicality of tales of witchcraft results from the constant question whether or not a victim may simply be imagining things. The reproach is not that a person may be inventing some demonic mischief, but that they are under some uncontrollable delusion. In this case, the imagination is often titled “fancy”. As a defender of witchcraft knowledge, Glanvill discusses the imagination in Sadducism Triumphatus, where he is eager to show that the reality of witchcraft is not decided on the evidence that a victim or witness has simply been imagining things. He presents his concept of the imagination is more subtly discussed in Scepsis Scientfica, 1665, which seems to constitute his most extensive treatment.3 The imagination, as dual instrument of representation and memory, is extremely powerful. Still, if Glanvill asserts the concept of vis imaginativa, the power of the imagination, in his witchcraft tract, he fully acknowledges the possible unreliability of the senses due to the imagination’s functions. In the following passage from chapter 13 of Scepsis Scientifica, he explains what he means by imagination, and where he sees the dangers of the imagination: [a] we erre and come short of Science, because we are so frequently mislead by the evil conduct of our Imaginations; whose irregular strength and importunity doth almost perpetually abuse us

In fact, he attributes the imagination with a number of vital functions, but he also locates the source of error with the imagination.

3

In his book Mind’s World: Imagination and Subjectivity from Descartes to Romanticism, Alexander Schlutz suggests that judgments of the imagination depend on the definition of the mind-body problem. In Christian and Neo-Platonic tradition, the imagination tends to receive a more negative assessment as it is thought to make the soul open and thus vulnerable to the influence of the senses. According to Schlutz, Aristotle’s assessment was more positive, since the imagination is important in processing sense-data, and a person is not forced to follow the imagination’s suggestion (22). Moreover, since the imagination is associated with the senses and the processes of the body rather than the soul, it is often seen in a moral opposition to reason (23).

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Now to make a full and clear discovery of our Phancies deceptions; ’twill be requisite to look into the nature of that mysterious faculty. […] The first is simple apprehension, which denotes no more, then the souls naked Intellection of an object, without either composition or deduction. The foundation of this act, as to materials, is sensitive perception. Now our simple apprehension of corporal objects, if present, we call Sense; if absent, we properly name it Imagination. When we would conceive a material object, our phancies present us with it’s Idea

Johnson used the last sentence of this passage in his dictionary. The imagination is thus able to take over the place of the senses and present the “soul” with an image of reality, which Glanvill calls “idea.” It is significant that he does not use the term “understanding” but the term “soul”. In attributing the imagination with cognitive functions, he appears to adopt a view similar to Hobbes’ in Leviathan. If Glanvill distinguishes the imagination from reason and understanding, but gives it representational capacity, Hobbes sees the imagination as a mostly passive faculty, enabling us to “have images” (White 1990: 17).4 According to Alan White, Hobbes “like Aristotle, … inextricably links imagination or fancy as a faculty with the presence of what he, at various times, calls ‘phantasms’, ‘seemings’, ‘appearances’, ‘images’, ‘ideas’, and ‘fancies’” (1990: 11f.). Thus, image, imagination and apparition cannot easily be separated. In the first part of Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Human Nature, Hobbes discusses the senses and concludes that there is “nothing without us really which we call image or colour”, but that “the said image or colour is but an apparition unto us” and that “in the conception … the subject of their [i.e. the senses’] inherence is not the object but the sentient” (EL, chapter II, p. 23). Hobbes uses the term “apparition” to describe the image of an object that a person has, having perceived it at some point, regardless of whether the object is there. Moreover, it also describes those instances where the brain produces a visual effect unrelated to any outside object, such as when one is hurt and sees light as a result of pain experienced (p. 24). Having subjectivised perception, since conception is an individual process, and separating the outside object of perception from the perceived subject in our minds, Hobbes then points out that this also explains why people disagree on tastes, smells and appearances, and locates a major source of deception in the notion that “whatsoever accidents or qualities our 4

Moody Prior points out that Hobbes was the only English thinker “during the seventeenth century who unmistakably and emphatically opposed the belief in witches”, but Hobbes supported the punishment of witches because he “considered them guilty of perpetuating an erroneous and mischievous belief” (170). In this, Hobbes follows Reginald Scot’s reasoning (cf. A Discoverie of Witchcraft).

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senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only” (EL, p. 26). In this sense and at this point in Hobbes’ argument, “apparition” has no supernatural connotations. Furthermore, in Hobbes’ use of the term, the possibility of self-deception is already included. Whether or not the imaginable is possible committed many philosophers to claim that the imaginable be possible (White, 172-183). David Hume considers it “an established maxim in metaphysics, That whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible”. White rightly points out that Hume not only commits to the idea that what is imagined or conceived is possible, but also to the statement that to imagine and to conceive are the same (ibid.). Defoe seems to favour the idea that the imaginable is possible. As he does so, it becomes clear to him that the imagination is positive as well as negative. In Robinson Crusoe, the narrator uses terminology that suggests a mechanical conception of the human mind, for which Defoe is indebted to Hobbes. The imagination is described in the following terms: There are some secret moving Springs in the Affections, which when they are set a going by some Object in view; or be it some Object, though not in view, yet rendred present to the Mind by the Power of Imagination, that Motion carries out the Soul by its Impetuosity to such violent eager embracings of the Object, that the Absence of it is insupportable (RC)

According to Foster, the imagination fulfils the “ambivalent function” of mediating both reason and will (Foster, 184). Given Robinson’s words of the “secret moving springs in the affections” and the “violent eager embracings of the object”, the occult and passionate nature of the imagination is certainly emphasized. Indeed, if Robinson’s encounters with the supernatural happen in his imagination, his experiences are certainly of a violent nature. Foster argues that Robinson Crusoe is structured by psychological conflicts that surface because of the disruptive energy of the imagination (ibid.). In the passage cited above, however, the problem is not the imagination in itself; the problem is the emotional confusion (cf. Boyce, 50). Still, because of its representative power, the imagination makes the realisation of loneliness so unbearable to Robinson. Robinson’s dreams are always meaningful. Towards the latter half of the narrative, he vividly dreams about an encounter with the cannibals (RC, 157). His dream is a premonition of things to come, since he indeed subsequently rescues Friday from the cannibals, and Friday stays as his servant. During his

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first time on the island, his dreams, and indeed his sleep, bear symbolic connotations: In this second sleep, I had this terrible Dream. I thought, that I was sitting on the Ground on the Outside of my Wall, where I sat when the Storm blew after the Earthquake, and that I saw a Man descend from a great black Cloud, in a bright Flame of Fire, and light upon the Ground: He was all over as bright as a Flame, so that I could but just bear to look towards him; his Countenance was most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for Words to describe; when he stepp‘d upon the Ground with his Feet, I thought the Earth trembl‘d, just as it had done before in the Earthquake, and all the Air look‘d, to my Apprehension, as if it had been fill‘d with Flashes of Fire. (RC, 70)

Brightness prevents Robinson from fully taking in the angelic apparition, even though the “man descends from a great black cloud”. The blackness of the cloud only serves to make the apparition brighter, however. The dreamscape of this description, of the angel descending from heaven, recalls Jacob’s dream at Bethel in the Old Testament (Genesis 28.12-19). In Jacob’s dream, God promises Jacob to keep the Covenant. At this point, Robinson’s dream is no longer analogous. Instead, while it reminds Robinson of the Biblical Covenant, and consequently also of Robinson’s moral duties, it is not a message that promises hope, but a message that promises punishment. The angel speaks to him in a manner that Robinson calls “impossible” to render: He was no sooner landed upon the Earth, but he moved towards me, with a long Spear or Weapon in his Hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising Ground, at some Distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a Voice so terrible, that it is impossible to express the Terror of it; all that I can say I understood, was this, Seeing all these Things have not brought thee to Repentance, now thou shalt die: At which Words, I thought he lifted up the Spear that was in his Hand, to kill me. (RC, 70-1)

In his dream, Robinson is unable to see properly, even if he manages to give a description of his dream. Ironically, the angel’s reproach concerns Robinson’s moral blindness. Furthermore, Robinson believes that the angel will kill him, which is not only an extremely violent image attributed to a divine messenger, but also indicates the intensity of his fear. Robinson concludes his account of the dream:

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No one, that shall ever read this Account, will expect that I should be able to describe the Horrors of my Soul at this terrible Vision, I mean, that even while it was a Dream, I even dreamed of those Horrors; nor is it any more possible to describe the Impression that remain‘d upon my Mind when I awak‘d and found it was but a Dream. (RC, 71)

Robinson lives through this dream, as if it was real. As he tries to explain it, given its dream quality, he relates the dreamt vision to his irreligion and to the guilt that he feels toward his father. Yet, the experience of the incommensurable sight remains. He insists that he cannot truly describe what happened, that his vision is an experience that transcends description, suggesting that there may be experience beyond words, and leaving the question of their “reality” unresolved. The protagonist’s response to his experience is two-fold. It makes him realise the inadequacy of language, and he can only express his emotions. His foremost emotion being fear, the narrative arguably suggests that emotions replace words, and that, indeed, emotions have no verbal correspondence. The visual character of the imagination would thus serve to give the emotional image, which, if it can be described, is not in fact a direct representation of the mental event. From an aesthetic point of view, one could read an episode such as Robinson’s dream as a poetic rendering of the sublime. Gary Hentzi who suggests such a reading, supports his argument by referring to the emotions of fear and terror that are involved in the sublime experience of storms and earthquakes. According to Hentzi, a similar representation of the sublime occurs in H.F.’s observation of the funeral pit in plague-ridden London of Journal of the Plague Year (“Sublime Moments and Social Authority in Robinson Crusoe and A Journal of the Plague Year,” 1993: 419-434). Indeed, Robinson’s dream vision follows his immediately preceding experience of a storm and an earthquake, so that perhaps the violence of the vision plausibly follows the violent natural events. In Robinson’s case, the sublime moments are his vision of the divine. The confusion resulting from the emotional response constitutes a significant part of its effect as a sublime moment. Yet, if awe and terror are typical responses to the sublime, the confrontation with storms, earthquakes and death is of this world. In Defoe’s case the forces of nature introduce the possibility to interpret natural occurrences in spiritual terms, as has been pointed out by J. Paul Hunter and G.A. Starr.5 While they evoke a similar range of emotions, dreams and visions are mental phenomena, lived and experienced within the individual.

5

Starr, George A. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic

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Even if read as delusionary and possibly pathological episodes, within the context of the discourse on the supernatural, pathological mental fits were considered the result of a demonic intervention, such as a bewitchment. Thus, Cotton Mather writes down the story of a family in which all the children, and the daughter in particular, suffered “strange Fits, beyond those that attend an Epilepsie, or Catalepsie, or those that they call The Diseases of Astonishment” (1691:3). Quick to say that the fits were worse than such as would be caused by an epilepsie, Mather makes sure that the possible illness of the children does not make for a valid explanation of the phenomenon. Mather’s narration is embedded in his own comments and in two prefaces, one written by four doctors and citizens of his town, the other written by Richard Baxter, the English dissenting divine. While it is problematic to align Defoe with Cotton Mather, given Defoe’s rational view of magic and witchcraft, he retains the vocabulary of delusion and ignorance. As previously demonstrated, passages from Moll Flanders and Roxana make apparent how Defoe introduces the supernatural as a reality into his fiction. The episode of Moll’s acoustic hallucination, which was discussed in detail above, is distinctively unmediated in terms of narration. The narrator in no way does not qualify the experience, nor does she introduce any linguistic quantifiers. Similarly, the episode of Roxana’s vision of her then lover, the Jeweller, suggests an immediate waking visionary experience. However, in her case there is a qualification: “I star’d at him, as if I was frighted, for I thought all his Face look’d like a Death’s-Head; and then, immediately, I thought I perceiv’d his Head all Bloody” (Roxana, 88). Yet, the qualifier refers to her emotional state, it does not refer to her vision, which is described in a detached way: “I thought I perceiv’d”. So, other than Moll, Roxana in fact distances herself from the experience, by turning it into a product of her imagination, that is, into a delusion. At the same time, though, she also describes her terror as something not real to her experience. Like Moll, then, she cannot properly explain what happens and responds by both a cognitive and emotional repression. The confusion that Roxana demonstrates after her vision of her lover covered in blood, does not leave her inactive: she warns her lover. But she does not mention her vision to him. As her premonition turns out to be true, she remains silent about her experience. She may be able to appropriate the phenomenon in her belief system, but she does not have the vocabulary nor the judgment to address the occurrence any further.

Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.

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What might be called Roxana’s “ignorance” sheds a dubious light on her moral character. It shows that she is unsettled in her religious world. It comes as no surprise that witches are always characterised as “ignorant”, whereas the righteous possess a “knowledge of God” and “a knowledge of the Soul’s immortality”. Such is the terminology of Cotton Mather (1691) to describe the difference between witches and innocents. Roxana’s confusion, then, is paradoxical. As a response to a sublime moment, it may indicate her encounter with the divine, but her confusion is also the most extreme expression of her ignorance. The same confusion is indeed shared by Robinson, Moll and, to some extent, even by H.F. One can argue, then, that the sublime creates moments of ambivalence that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, between reason and desire, and between salvation and damnation. Immediate experience is set against premonitions of death and afterlife.

3.3 I MAGINATION

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U NCERTAINTY

The imagination is held accountable for errors of judgment and for the irrationality of certain beliefs, as it may misrepresent reality or call forth illusions. Having identified the “Faculties of Mind” as reason and will, the imagination being the messenger, Francis Bacon then adds: “Neither is the Imagination simply and only a messenger; but is invested with or at leastwise usurpeth no small authority in itself, besides the duty of the message…” (The Advancement of Learning, Book Two, p. 217). According to the accounts of Glanvill, Hobbes and Bacon, it is the imagination, then, which has the power to delude the subject. The imagination is defined as the power of suggestion, or rather, in Francis Bacon’s words, the power of “fascination” (ibid. 216). By contrast, as a type of belief, knowledge is subject to belief formation. In the language of the seventeenth century, reason deals with knowledge. Knowledge is usually defined as rational belief (cf. Jürgen Habermas 1981; Michael Williams 1999; Paul Moser: “knowledge entails justified true belief”, 1999: 70; Keith Lehrer 1999). Not all beliefs need be rational, however, even if the question whether or not a belief may be justified tends to be ubiquitous. Indeed, in terms of a religious epistemology and in terms of the process of belief formation, rationality is not in fact the distinctive criterion to decide on the truthvalue of a belief (cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff 1999). Yet, if a religious belief is presented as a knowledge claim, a problem may arise. If it were possible to define belief as rational, that is, to conceive of faith as a type of knowledge – which is the quest of the supernaturalists – then belief and

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justification are conflated. Consequently, one adopts an epistemology of belief that focuses on questions of rationality and perhaps fails to account for the recognition of religious truths that are outside the frame of rationality. However, the supernatural tracts, and Defoe’s fictions, repeatedly focus on such experiences that precisely do not conform to the idea of knowledge as rational belief. These moments are subject to intense scrutiny. Tim Bayne and Jordi Fernandez observe that belief in supernatural entities seems to be a “universal feature” of the “human condition”, but belief or disbelief can never be justified on the grounds of “epistemic rationality” (2009: 5). In the face of threatening epistemic uncertainty – which is the result of confronting dubitable beliefs on the grounds of shaky evidence – belief formation becomes a crucial issue. Deficiencies in belief formation are usually referred to as self-deception and delusion. In turn, delusion is defined as holding a belief in the face of contrary evidence. Bayne and Fernández explain that “the standard account of what it might be for delusion and self-deception to be pathologies of belief formation appeals to the notion of epistemic rationality … [the delusional person] flout[s] the epistemic norm of believing only what one’s evidence licences” (3). Unsurprisingly, there is a “broad agreement with the claim that what makes a belief delusional is the fact that it is held in the face of obvious proof or evidence to the contrary” (3). But as we have seen, the nature of “obvious proof or evidence” is contested in seventeenth-century theological and philosophical debate. Glanvill first of all denies the argument that witchcraft is only imagined and a product of the “fancy” (p. 66ff., “Some Philosophical Considerations about Witchcraft”, in Sadducism Triumphatus, third edition, 1689). He then continues: But again…the strange Actions related of Witches and presumed impossible, are not ascribed to their own powers; but to the Agency of those wicked Confederates they imploy. And to affirm, that those evil spirits cannot do that which we conceit impossible, is boldly to stint the powers of Creatures, whose nature and faculties we know not; and to measure the world of Spirits by the narrow rules of our own impotent beings. [….] The Transformations of Witches into the shapes of other Animals, upon the same supposal [i.e. that body and soul may be separated without death] is very conceivable, since then ’tis easie enough to imagine, that the power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes, with more ease than the fancy of the Mother can the stubborn matter of the Foetus in the Womb, as we see it frequently doth in the instances that occur of Signatures and monstrous Singularities; and perhaps sometimes the confederate Spirit puts tricks upon the senses of the Spectators, and those shapes are only illusions. (pp. 72, 74)

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While Glanvill concedes that the imagination may flaw our perception of the world, he also emphasizes that our inability to accept certain phenomena as possible results from the “narrow rules of our own impotent beings”. The reason why we cannot conceive of a world of spirits, let alone perceive this other world, is that our minds are limited. Our nature thus confines us. On the other hand, Glanvill argues that it is possible for witches to shape-shift, by referring to monstrous births. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park explain that monstrous births were thought to be the result of the mother’s imagination. Thus, if the mother had strange thoughts in her pregnancy, the child would be born deformed (cf. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 2001). This is precisely the idea that Glanvill defends. As Glanvill concedes that the child need not be deformed, but that the spectator may be under the devil’s influence, his language is strangely mindful of Descartes’ malin genie. However, if in Glanvill the Devil’s trickery manifests in real phenomena, Descartes’ malignant demon is an instrument of the mind to guard itself against deception: I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shakes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams, which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands ore eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things. I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree. … I am like a prisoner who is enjoying an imaginary freedom while asleep; as he begins to suspect that he is asleep, he dreads being woken up… (Descartes, 79)

The demonic has quite different roles in the two passages quoted. If in the former the devil is not only real but also manipulates the imagination, in the latter, the demon is a helpful product of the imagination to aid contemplating the liberty of the mind. In Descartes, the power of the imagination lies in creating this free space. In Glanvill, however, the appeal to the demonic power undermines the argument that there is significance in the fact of the imagination’s fallibility. If Defoe has a sceptical vision of reality, The Political History of the Devil illustrates that his scepticism mainly concerned the decisions and action of

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mankind. In his satirical vision of the political history of the world, he never tires to try and exonerate the devil from an involvement in the bad choices of mankind. Thus, Defoe seems closer to the Cartesian use of the demonic figure, even if The Political History paints a bleak picture of human abilities. In the early twentieth century, Kittridge reiterated in his book on witchcraft in England that it is easy to dismiss witchcraft beliefs as delusional or unreasonable.6 In an Early Modern culture where folk traditions were alive and where many natural phenomena remained inexplicable, the testimony of a witchcraft accusation would be considered as an expression of that culture and not as extraordinary or indeed as the statement of a madman. Certainly, one cannot emphasize enough the fact how witchcraft trials engage the popular imagination, and how often the figures of actual executions are drastically exaggerated. Certainly, both folk tradition and “elite” culture retained witchcraft beliefs until well into the eighteenth century and later still. Most of the writers discussed in the first chapter display beliefs in witchcraft, or magic, to varying degrees. Apart from the radical deists and atheists virtually no one would have thought supernatural “interventions” and preternatural manipulations entirely beyond the possible. When speaking of delusion and self-deception, therefore, one must be very careful not to fall into the trap of dismissing beliefs in the occult as the expression of insane persons outside the mainstream of culture. Rather, “delusion” should be treated as the fluid concept that it was. At the very beginning of this chapter, a passage from Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft serves to highlight the problems raised by Scot and others when they discuss the philosophical, theological and moral aspects of phenomena that are – if one follows Scot – more than anything else the result of social circumstances: these old women being daunted with authority, circumvented with guile, constrained by force, compelled by fear, induced by error, and deceived by ignorance, do fall into such rash credulity, and so are brought unto these absurd confessions. Whose error of mind, and blindness of will dependeth upon the disease and infirmity of nature: and therefore their actions in that case are more to be born withal: because they being destitute of reason, can have no consent. For, … There can be no sin without consent, nor injury committed without a mind to do wrong. (Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft, Bk. III, Chap. VIII, p. 28)

Scot shares the view that individual responsibility should be put into the foreground of the discussion. “Disease and infirmity of nature” are the reasons 6

Kittridge, George Lyman. Witchcraft in Old and New England. New York: Atheneum, 1972 (1929).

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why people are so credulous. While Scot suggests that the fault is in nature, he also suggests that the victims, i.e. the alleged witches, suffer because of the given hierarchical structures, which set learned against illiterate, and law against ignorant alleged perpetrators. Individual responsibility is a recurrent topic, be it in relation to the problem of evil or in relation to the question of culpability, as in the passage above. Precisely because the participants in supernatural stories and in witchcraft trials are not usually capable of judgment and therefore not reliable as witnesses, the idea of individual agency and responsibility is evoked as a desirable concept of self.7 It comes as no surprise then that as the supernatural tracts emphasise the moral obligation of the subject by pointing to the significance of the individual’s free will, they also insist that subjective experience should be verified. According to Foster, the seventeenth-century vocabulary of the unconscious informs the language of the imagination (183ff.). Similarly, the witchcraft tracts might be read in terms of the psychopathology of demonic experiences, not least because counter-arguments against witch-hunts were commonly based on the mentally and physically poor state of so-called witches. However, when looking at the discussion of delusion, the focus shifts from explaining possible motivations to a discussion of how one can ensure the epistemological validity of affirmative claims. Such a movement can be read as a concession to the insight that the mind, and the imagination, is not fully understood. To Defoe, the relationship between belief and imagination is precarious, because the connection between the belief and imagination (rather than belief and reason) constitutes a problem in the discourse on the supernatural. In the first chapter of History of Apparitions, Defoe’s persona voices the following sentiment: I have, I believe, as true a Notion of the Power of the Imagination as I ought to have, … I believe we form as many Apparitions in our Fancy, as we see really with our Eyes, and a great many more; nay, our Imaginations sometimes are very diligent to embark the Eyes (and the Ears too) in the Delusion, and persuade us to believe we see Spectres and Appearances, and hear Noises and Voices when indeed, neither the Devil or any other Spirit, good or bad, has troubled themselves about us. (HA, 43, sic)

7

From a different angle, with the origins of the English novel in mind, Michael McKeon comments on the relationship between epistemology and ethics in apparition narratives (McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). His thesis will be discussed in the next chapter.

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Initially, the imagination is granted to be the main source of error. This is obviously true when the alleged object of perception should be something supernatural. In addition, it would also be true of any type of rational judgment that imagining what is not there would lead to a misjudgement. Furthermore, the passage makes clear that there are both visual and auditory deceptions. Lastly, the repetition of the word “believe” suggests that belief and imagination are as closely related as imagination and judgment. Judgment, belief and imagination are arguably not a triad because of a positive and contingent relationship between the three, but because their negatives, e.g. “delusion”, “self-deception” and “error”, often form a near-synonymous group. In the supernatural tracts, the word delusion seems be used indiscriminately to cover all misconceptions from illusion to misjudgement, thus referring both to reason and imagination.

3.4 “D ELUDED ” I MAGINATION There is a disparity between imagining and knowing, both of which lay claim on the “reality” of their objects. If the idea of Defoe’s “sceptical vision of reality” is somewhat questionable, it cannot be dismissed entirely. Defoe seems to have a synthetic approach to Locke, as his presentation of the imagination in the supernatural tracts and in the fictions suggest both that the imagination is an avenue of perception and that it may be the source of error. His adoption of an ambivalent concept of the imagination can also be seen in his polemical use of the term “enthusiasm”. The word “enthusiasm” is derived from the Greek “enthous,” which means “possessed by gods” or “inspired”. In the supernatural tracts discussed here, divine inspiration as a form of possession, or holy delusion, are not a topic. This may plausibly be attributed in part to a Protestant prejudice against such Catholic phenomena.8 Moreover, such holy delusions contradict the idea of belief as rational. Indeed, as a term of contempt, enthusiasm is generally used to accuse a writer of rationally unsound reasoning. As Michael Heyd states, the New Philosophy initially attracted the reproach of enthusiasm, which explains why Henry More addresses the issue in his treatise Brief Discourse on Enthusiasm (cf. Heyd, 144-164). As was seen in chapter one, while it inverts the scientific attitude of empiricism in order to undermine its materialism, the discourse on the

8

In Olive Payne’s Catalogue of Defoe’s and Reverend Farewell’s libraries, quite a few saints’ lives are listed, the titles of which suggest holy raptures and delusions. But it is impossible to determine to whom they belonged.

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supernatural relies on the basic assumption of the rationality of scientific reasoning. If the supernaturalists tried to give rational grounds for positive belief in the supernatural, enthusiasm effectively posits the possibility that there may be positive belief regardless of its rationality, which may be equally true. In his Brief Discourse on Enthusiasm, More defines enthusiasm as “nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired. Now to be inspired is, to be moved in an extraordinary manner by the power or Spirit of God to act, speak, or think what is holy, just and true” (1662: 2). It is therefore, according to Bayne’s and Fernandez’s terminology, an aberration in belief formation. By giving the example of “mad” men claiming to have seen the Devil or angel, More suggests that enthusiasm is a form of delusional belief. More not only equates enthusiasm with irrational behaviour, he describes it as a type of insanity. One major reason for such an irrational and misguided belief in inspiration, i.e. for enthusiasm, is according to More the imagination. Wherefore it is the enormous strength of the Imagination (which is yet the Soul’s weaknesse or unwieldinesse, whereby she so farre sinks into Phantasmes that she cannot recover her self into the use of her more free Faculties of Reason and Understanding) that thus peremptorily engages a man to believe a lie. And if it be so strong as to assure us of the presence of some externall Object which yet is not there, why may it not be as effectual in the begetting of the belief of some more internall apprehensions, such as have been reported of mad and fanaticall men, who have so firmly and immutably fancied themselves to be God the Father, the Messias, the Holy Ghost, the Angel Gabriel, the last and chiefest Prophet that God would send into the world, and the like. (section 6, p. 4)

More’s negative conception of the imagination is conspicuous. The imagination lacks the purity and rationality of reason and understanding (ibid.). Furthermore, it is the “soul’s weakness” that allows reason and understanding to be captured in a state of error. The religious undertones of the passage are obvious: under the impression of an enthusiastic imagination, man is no longer free in his will. Speaking of religious enthusiasm, More holds that “the Originall of such peremptory delusions as mankind are obnoxious to, is the enormous strength and vigour of the Imagination” (section 6, p. 5). Without going into the details of the physiological grounds of More’s argument here, one notes that he equates the falsehood of a belief, that is, “the lie”, with mental insanity. This suggests, on the one hand, that insanity is a state of imprisonment. This is indeed an intriguing metaphor for mental disorders, which recalls the ending of Roxana where the novel’s geography focuses on enclosed spaces (cf. Backscheider). On the other

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hand, More’s language fails to distinguish between the pathology of a mental disorder and the general currency of error. One might argue that More’s concept of mental disorder is limited to the concept of delusion, which, as discussed above, usually follows an internal logic. In this section, then, More does not account for the rational character of delusions, nor does his physiological model satisfactorily account for pathology, even if he offers a stereotypical description of psychotic states. Locke devotes a chapter to enthusiasm and begins his discussion by stating that if one searches for truth, one must love truth (589f.). In the context of the preceding chapter, where Locke discusses the relationship between reason and faith, to associate enthusiasm with love of truth is rather intriguing; since this implies that the pursuit of truth may in itself lead to insanity. In the section preceding the mentioned passage, Locke distances himself from the possibility of revelation while accepting scriptural divine revelation as an indubitable object of faith. He attacks is the idea that reason is in some way in opposition to faith. Locke says that the contrary is true: Whatever God has revealed is certainly true; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith: but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge; which can never permit the mind to reject a greater evidence to embrace what is less evident, nor allow it to entertain probability in opposition to knowledge and certainty. There can be no evidence that any traditional revelation is of divine original, in the words we receive it, and in the sense we understand it, so clear and so certain as that of the principles of reason: and there fore nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and selfevident dictates of reason has a right to urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do. (588)

Having said this, he concludes that it is the rejection of reason that endangers faith. In the subsequent passage Locke’s language is particularly noteworthy. …. for to this crying up of faith in opposition to reason, we may, I think in good measure, ascribe those absurdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. For men, having been principled with an opinion that they must not consult reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common sense and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their fancies and natural superstitions; and have been by them into so strange opinions and extravagant practices in religion, that a considerate man cannot but stand amazed at their follies… (589)

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His usage of “possess”, “fancy”, “superstition”, and “amazed” is a play on the meaning of these words. Their idiomatic quality in this passage implies a satiric jibe against the unreasonableness of religion. The very rhetoricity of the terms demonstrates that in Locke’s text their literal “serious” meanings have lost their relevance. The various descriptions of the negative aspects of the imagination, that is, delusion and error, make use of similar vocabularies. In The Angelick Vision of the World, Defoe employs a narrator to whom the imagination signifies a creative potential. Told in the narrative voice of Robinson Crusoe, the Angelick Vision of the World appears to show a belief in the power of the imagination that is contrary to the view presented by the satirical persona of History of Apparitions. Indeed, Robinson of the Angelick Vision of the World no longer sees reason to mistrust the imagination, apart from the times on the island when he was dreaming or ill. In the Angelick Vision, the narrator envisages the cosmos, effectually transcending the boundaries of his physical being and leaving the earth with his mind. As he earnestly asserts, the experience is quite real. Imagining the world of spirits as situated in the space between the planets, the narrator paints the picture of a cosmos that combines the medieval spheres with modern Newtonian physics. In this world, the spirits commune with each other and may communicate with humans. The episode is an illustration of the abilities of the human mind. While describing a picture of the nature of the universe, the narrator manoeuvres himself dangerously close to an enthusiast’s attitude. Moreover, Robinson’s “vision” of the world of spirits foreshadows Hume’s comment, quoted above, that what we can imagine, is not absolutely impossible. Defoe was not an enthusiast; and, as Novak argued (see above), this episode may be read in terms of a sceptical vision of reality. By the same right, however, Defoe’s narrator may abstain from judgment whether or not one must grant the possibility of the reality of such a vision, as much as it claims the unlikelihood of the same. Defoe’s debt to Locke indeed seems apparent in this instance. In Book 2, chapter 23, section 5, Locke writes that from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can no more conclude its non-existence than we can, for the same reason, deny the existence of body: it being as rational to affirm there is no body, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say there is no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of a spirit. (210; my emphasis)

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Still, in the imaginative episode in the Angelick Vision, the imagination not only serves as the means of representation, it is used to create new knowledge in the form of a positive vision. Such knowledge “acquisition” is not easily dismissed, even if Defoe may be doubly ironic, both towards the implicit enthusiasm and towards the potential of imagining possible worlds. However, in A System of Magick, the narrator similarly envisages the “air” as the place where both spirits and the devil reside. In the “airy Regions… not confin’d to the Atmosphere of this Globe the Earth … I am willing to allow Satan to be in Capacity, (at least able) to visit all the Atmospheres and Spaces in the immense Waste”, so the narrator tells us (System of Magick, 270f.). In contrast to the Angelick Vision, the description in System of Magick is rooted in argumentative speculation. The narrator concludes that the world of spirits is “in the air,” from the given knowledge that he claims to possess. In this version, Defoe refrains from an imaginative, visionary, treatment of the subject and has his narrator concede to such an image of the cosmos without further debate. While conflicting readings of the passage from Angelick Vision are possible, Defoe’s strategic use of the term “enthusiasm” is clear. Thus, Defoe summarizes his critical attitude toward Glanvill with the term “enthusiasm”. Such a reproach weighs heavily in a treatise like History of Apparitions. For the notion and term of “enthusiasm” has a conceptual history of its own, and one can safely assume that Defoe was fully aware of the implications of reproaching Glanvill with “enthusiasm”. In the mid-seventeenth century, enthusiasm was the common reproach directed against nonconformists. In context of the demonological discourse, the source of the visions, predictions and miracles that had been attested by nonconformist sects, was attributed to the devil (Heyd, 41f.). It is thus a critique of a religious practice, but by implication also of the branch of science represented by someone like Webster that assumed occult and magic, but nondemonic, workings in nature. To Henry More and Joseph Glanvill, the idea that one might prove the spiritual in nature was one of the main purposes of their philosophy. However, such a concept does not agree with the mechanical view of nature that was supported by most Fellows of the Royal Society. Robert Boyle eminently among them, they saw the task of natural philosophy “end where the discussion of spiritual agencies and divine providence began” (A. Rupert Hall, 175). The “preternatural philosophy” was likened to “religious enthusiasm”, and scientific interest was effectively separated from anything above and beyond nature. As Lorraine Daston observes,

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natural philosophy was not alone in evicting the sensibility of wonder in the first half of the eighteenth century. Men of letters were if anything even more vehement in their distaste for all that smacked of the marvellous. The author of the article on ‘Marvelous’ in the Encyclopédie allowed that marvels might have their place in the epic poetry of Homer or even Milton, but not for contemporary Frenchmen, who could not digest the true unless it was verisimilar … It is no accident that Enlightenment natural philosophers likened the preternatural philosophy of their predecessors to religious enthusiasm. (Daston 2000: 39)

According to Rupert Hall, the majority of the Fellows of the Royal Society saw the “perfection of nature” as evidence of God’s existence (175). But even if metaphors such as “God is the author of nature” abound, theology was not considered as part of the scope of natural philosophy. Henry More’s view of nature was opposed to the mechanical material view defended within the Royal Society, in which Glanvill followed More. Their concept of nature is at the root of their arguments, and explains how they could define the imagination and attack enthusiasm without finding their own views vulnerable to similar reproach. Defoe’s position remains ambiguous. If nothing else, his attempt to reconcile the mechanism of Boyle and Bacon with the possibility of spiritual agency and with his belief in particular providence in his work shows the conceptual changes in the thinking about nature (cf. Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences). The two passages from Angelick Vision and A System of Magick, quoted and discussed above, suggest that Defoe moved the world of spirits quite literally into the “super-natural” realm, in that he gives the geographical location of the world of spirits outside the atmosphere of the earth. Within these shifting paradigms of nature, Defoe redefines enthusiasm and limits it to its relationship to reason: STRANGE! that Mr Glanvill, Aubrey, and others, would publish such a story as this, without some just Enquiries to reconcile it to common sense, as well as Religion […] The ridiculous Part discredits the real Part, and it being so surfeiting to our Reason to hear the first Part, we throw off our Patience, and will nothing at all of it. It is true we should not do thus; the Reality of the Thing, abstracted from these distracted and enthusiastick Notions, is not lessen’d. (HA, 291, 294, original 1726 edition)

When he calls these “notions” “distracted and enthusiastick ”, his choice of such a collocation suggests that the “enthusiastic notion” is “distracted”, in other words, that it is madness. Yet, while we can read the combination of the two adjectives as a rhetorical emphasis, we should also consider that “distracted” is

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not quite the same as “enthusiastic” to Defoe. When in System of Magick, Defoe completes this criticism, he focuses on the criminal fraudulence of religious enthusiasm: How strangely does religious Enthusiasm keep its hold of Mankind, and how exactly do past things and present correspond! As the End is the same, so are the Means: pious Frauds got ground from the Beginning, and pious Frauds get ground to the End. As no cheats are so fatal as those which come prefac’d with Introductions of Religion, so no Cheats are so easy to prevail, so soon make Impression upon the people, or stamp those Impressions deeper. (pp. 65-66, original edition)

Bearing in mind Foucault’s argument that madness is often associated with criminality, especially in the historical context of the development of confinement for the insane, the criminal and the poor in the seventeenth century, one notes that Defoe carefully distinguishes between religion, enthusiasm, magic and madness (cf. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 35-60). By associating enthusiasm with dishonest and criminal behaviour, Defoe distances himself from an idea of religion that used to be discredited by its links to so-called demonic magic.9 Similarly, he draws a line between enthusiasm and religion, in order to avoid saying that all religion is enthusiastic. Moreover, by attributing enthusiasm to Glanvill rather than Webster, he also manages to redirect the reproach of enthusiasm toward those who would use it to discredit their opponents. Defoe’s statements can be read, then, as an argument for the acceptance of epistemic rationality.

3.5 E RROR

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D ELUSION ? D ISCREDITING T ESTIMONIES

To call an opinion “enthusiastic” is to discredit it as not pertaining to reality, both in the sense of its being fictitious and its being delusional. Defoe claimed that sometimes it was necessary to defend a conviction against the “opinion” of everybody else. Such is his view in An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity. Michael McKeon suggests that Robinson Crusoe is “Defoe’s principle response to the central question of narrative epistemology – the question of how to tell the true in narrative” (1987: 315). If this is correct, Defoe had a major reason to

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Cf. History of the Devil, (Part II, chapter 9, 234). The passage demonstrates Defoe’s dismissive attitude towards Glanvill. The passage is more fully discussed in chapter one.

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disagree with Joseph Glanvill, who considered fiction to be a potentially bad influence on the judgement. Glanvill’s main argument is that fiction or “story” works on the imagination, which in turn works on the passions and on reason. If truth can be told in fiction by imitating quantitative evidence and historical contingency (cf. McKeon), and by offering “extraordinarily detailed descriptions” (Novak 1964: 662), Defoe was aware that the imagination represents a challenge to such truth claims. In fact, the possibility that the protagonist may be delusional, and unreasonably enthusiastic, is a recurring theme in his fictional work. The relationship between fiction and delusion, between the imaginable and the imaginary, has to be negotiated, then. In section [b] of chapter 13 of Scepsis Scientifica, Glanvill describes what he considers the harm done by the imagination. The word “story” designates fictitious stories; it is perhaps best paraphrased as “common lore”. But this observation is only an introduction to a description of unreason. Hence Story is full of the wonders, it works upon the Hypochondriacal Imaginants; to whom the grossest absurdities are infallible certainties, and free reason an Impostour. That Groom, that conceited himself an Emperour, thought all as irrational as disloyal, that did not acknowledge him: And he, that supposed himself made of Glass, thought all mad, that dis-believed him. But we pity, or laugh at those fatuous Extravagants; while yet our selves have a considerable dose of what makes them so: and more sober heads have a set of misconceits, which are as absurd to an unpassionated reason, as those are to our unabused senses. And as the greatest counter-evidence to those distemper’d phancies is none: so in the more ordinary deceits, in which our Imaginations insensibly engage us, we give but little credit to the uncorrupted suggestions of the faculty, that should disabuse it. […] (underscores my emphases)

Speaking of delusions, Brendan Maher notes that scientist often do not realise that their theories bear all the marks of a delusional belief, especially in their resistance to altering their systems (1988). Glanvill’s criticism seems to go in a similar direction. Glanvill dismisses “story” which is “full of wonders” and thus argues that story does not represent reality. Furthermore, he claims that, because of the delusive qualities of the imagination, self-deception is not just exhibited by the mad but by everybody to some degree. Glanvill adopted a platonic distrust of fiction, which, as he says in this passage, replaces reality with a “corrupted” version of it. The underlying recurring question is, though, whether or not one can represent reality, which to Glanvill is a question of the functions of the imagination.

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People writing on delusional imagination favour the same examples, thus, the delusion of believing oneself to be made of glass, becomes the epitome of insanity. Henry More uses this example in A Brief Discourse of Enthusiasm (1662, section 12, page 9). Locke, noting the logic coherence of delusions, mentions “others, who have thought themselves made of glass” and observes that they “used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies” (Book 2, chapter 11, section 14, page 106). Similarly, Foucault refers to the glass delusion. Like Locke, he points out the internal coherence of the delusion. He argues that “the ultimate language of madness is that of reason” (90). In his words, “madness is … beyond imagination, and yet it is profoundly rooted in it; for it consists merely in allowing the image a spontaneous value, total and absolute truth” (88). If fiction is to represent truth, the reproach of enthusiasm weighs doubly, firstly because fiction is in itself an imaginary version of reality, secondly, because truth claims are made for it. But, as Foucault says, madness, or the mad “image”, is beyond the image that a “reasonable man” will “judge to be true or false” (88). But Glanvill takes the argument in a different direction. Having firmly established that false imagination, i.e. “distemper’d phancies”, cannot be swayed or corrected, Glanvill next addresses the problem that the sublime or divine is beyond our mental abilities to conceive: Thus we are involv’d in inextricable perplexities about the Divine Nature, and Attributes; and in our reasonings about those sublimities are puzzled with contradictions, which are but the toyings of our Phancies, no absurdities to our more defaecte faculties. What work do our Imagination make with Eternity and Immensity? and how are we gravell’d by their cutting Dilemma’s? I’m confident many have thus imagin’d themselves out of their Religion; and run a ground on that more desperate absurdity, Atheism. To say, Reason opposeth Faith, is to scandalize both: ’Tis Imagination is the Rebel; Reason contradicts its impious suggestions. (Scepsis Scientifica, chap. 13)

In a crucial twist of argumentation, Glanvill posits the imagination as the source not only of error but also of atheism. Having shown the inadequacy of our minds, Glanvill turns the sensory unreliability and perceptual uncertainty caused by the imagination into an argument for the belief in supernatural entities. Glanvill makes a point of saying that he is addressing a learned audience and not the common people who would not understand him anyway. There clearly is a social prejudice in his tract. It is also his way of saying that the common people should not be confused, since only students and scholars are in danger of scepticism and atheism. In addition, it is clear from the following passage that

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Glanvill writes in a moralistic spirit when he is talking about the fallacies caused by the imagination: yet another as deplorable a deceit of our Imaginations, as any: which is, its impressing a strong perswasion of the Truth of an Opinion, where there is no evidence to support it. And if it be such, as we never heard question’d or contradicted, ’tis then unsuspected. The most of mankind is led by opinionative impulse, and Imagination is praedominant. An ungrounded credulity is cry’d up for faith; and the more vigorous impressions of Phancy, for the Spirits motions. These are the grand delusions of our Age, and the highest evidence of the Imaginations deceptions. (ibid.)

When the perception of reality is replaced by the imaginary, the imagination leads to “credulity”. One may argue that “credulity” can be paraphrased by “unreason”, as the “grand delusions” are based on self-deception and “opinion” formed without “evidence”. The generalisation that “most of mankind” is guided by impulse and vapours (that is, “the Spirits motions”), expresses a social bias. “Most of mankind” lacks the strength of reason to resist false impressions. While Glanvill’s attack is directed against the academia of his day, he seems tacitly to include the uneducated in his criticism. After all, he addresses the learned under the assumption that the simple person would not be able to follow. On the other hand, as the uneducated are not confronted with sceptical controversies, they are less exposed to error of opinion. The simple man, who recognizes truth for what it is, by virtue of his natural reason, is a symbolic figure in The Journal of the Plague Year. However, while Defoe celebrates the role of everyman, the common man, both in religious and political context, he also presents the opposite of the common man as subject to delusion and ignorance (see below). Still, different to Glanvill, Defoe’s image of the common man sees man as being capable of using his or her good sense regardless of education. The combination of the reproach of erroneous beliefs, or delusions, and social prejudice marks the witchcraft debates. John Webster’s tract includes a system of categories of delusions. Webster acknowledges two types of cases. He distinguishes cases of deception from cases of delusion. In this first group, he lists for example fortune tellers and palm-readers: “there are many sorts of such kinds of Witches, as for gain and vain-glory do take upon them to declare hidden and occult things, to divine of things that are to come, and to do many wonderful matters, but that they are but Cheaters, Deceivers, and Couseners” (chap. II, p. 32). In particular, Webster censures that such tricksters claim to be able to foretell the future and that they take money for their services. It could be argued that deception and delusion are related terms, since both carry the element of

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make-belief; the difference is that the deceiver is acting consciously whereas the deluded is acted upon. Webster argues that the victims of such deception suffer from what he calls a “depraved and passive delusion”. Such is the result of a combination of bad upbringing by “blockish vulgar people” who teach beliefs in “Devils, Apparitions, Fayries, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, Spirits, and the like,” instead of Christianity and morality, and habit, as people tend to believe in what they are used to hearing (Webster, chap. II, p. 32). Again, the social prejudice is evident. Belief in witches and related subjects is vulgar. In addition, like Glanvill, Webster implies a cognitive deficiency or weakness in the victims of cheats and superstition. Both Webster and Glanvill are addressing a learned audience, but whereas the former argues that witch beliefs are current only with vulgar illiterate people, the latter regards the subject not only to be worthy of academic attention but also to deserve credence. Strangely enough, Webster and Glanvill seem to agree that witch beliefs are socially stratified, being rarely held by the educated strata of society, but diametrically disagree in their judgment of the situation. While Webster implies that folk beliefs should be overcome, and the illiterate educated, both in the terms of religion and tuition, Glanvill attacks the loss or denial of such beliefs. Their didactic verve goes in opposite directions. In Webster’s description and use of sources it is evident that he considers delusion as a state of illness, even though he does not think it necessary to make this point. Webster notes that delusion is not limited to the victims. Whereas the victims delude themselves into believing they are bewitched, the witches delude themselves into believing in their unnatural powers (cf. chap. V, p. 76). Historically speaking, actual witch beliefs were on the decline by the early eighteenth century, but what arguably survives in the fictional imagination, is the concern with delusion, unreason and enthusiasm. According to James Sharpe, Francis Hutchinson and Richard Boulton engaged in the last debate that seriously posited the reality of witchcraft (2001: 80ff.).10 Keith Thomas comments that “accusations of diabolical witchcraft were … rejected not because they had been closely scrutinized and found defective in some particular respect, but because they implied a conception of nature which now appeared 10 Francis Hutchinson, An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft (1718), takes a sceptical stance. Richard Boulton’s (1697-1724) The Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery and Witchcraft (1715) and his subsequent defence against Hutchinson in 1722 The Possibility and Reality of Magick, Sorcery and Witchcraft demonstrated. Or, a Vindication of a Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery and Witchcraft defend witch beliefs (cf. Sharpe, 80ff.).

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inherently absurd” (690). In Thomas’ opinion, this attitude became dominant enough to defeat the “attempts of some later seventeenth-century intellectuals to place the ancient belief of witchcraft upon a genuinely scientific foundation, by sifting through the many inherited tales of the supernatural in order to arrive at those which were authenticated beyond any doubt” (ibid.). While this is true for Francis Hutchinson’s approach, we will see from Defoe’s comments, by the 1720s, Thomas’s observation needs to be qualified to a certain extent. But Hutchinson’s as well as Defoe’s concern is not just with their predecessors’ outlook on science and understanding of nature, but with the readers to whom these older views still represent some authority. Keith Thomas states with some confidence that beliefs in demonic witchcraft were thought absurd by the early eighteenth century when Defoe wrote his major tracts on the supernatural and his major fictions. However, it can also be held that, as a form of physico-theology, the discourse on the supernatural survives into the eighteenth century as a variety of beliefs based on the belief in a spirit world (cf. Baine; Watts, Isaac. Philosophical essays on various subjects, viz. Space, substance, body, spirit, ... with some remarks on Mr. Locke’s Essay on the human understanding. To which is subjoined A brief scheme of ontology, ... By I. Watts, D.D. ESTC T082975).

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Francis Bacon credited the imagination with the power of “fascination”. Fiction depends on the power of suggestion. Similarly, when talking about the imagination, Glanvill attacks “story”, or fiction, for providing “wonder” rather than solid instruction (see above). As Hans Vaihinger suggests, Early Modern theories of fiction insisted on the epistemological falsehood of fiction. Yet, as Vaihinger demonstrates, Early Modern thinkers began to recognise the value of fiction in the fields of mathematics and ontology. However, John Locke did not consider the possible subjectivity, or solipsism, of ideas a productive insight. Surely, Defoe was aware of Bacon’s definition of “fictions” as “false hypotheses” (Vaihinger, 281), and knew Locke’s negative attitude, which expresses Locke’s concern to ensure the possibility of knowledge. The Early Modern negative view of fiction owes to the fact that science employed a variety of fictions to explain different phenomena, such as the theory of animal spirits which could be used to explain the relationship between mind and body, or else, the atomistic theory which is, according to Vaihinger, an “illustrative fiction” to account for the results of chemical observation (Vaihinger, 427-9).

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Science and literature share the preoccupation with singular subjectivity, on the one hand, and with the relationship of the imaginary to the real, on the other hand. As a theme, Defoe’s narratives reflect these concerns both on the level of metafictional comments and on the level of narrative material. Through the lens of the imagination, Defoe addresses deception and delusion, thereby restating the problem of the understanding subject as apprehending, perceiving and ordering the phenomena of the world. Indeed, false assumptions, or hypotheses, are a recurrent motif in his narratives. Writing some 60 years later than Glanvill and Webster, Defoe distances himself from his precursors precisely by reference to the two concepts imagination and enthusiasm. Furthermore, Defoe makes use of the “enthusiast’s” voice. In the Angelick Vision, the narrator comments atheism in the following terms: I have obser’vd, that some desperate People make a very ill use of the general Notion, there are no Apparitions, nor Spirits at all; and really the Use they make of it, is worse than the extreme of those, who, as I said, make Visions and Devils of every Thing they see or hear: For these Men persuade themselves there are no Spirits at all, either in the visible or invisible World, and carrying it on farther, they next annihilate the Devil, and believe nothing about him, either of one kind or another. (63; underscoring my emphasis)

The narrator dismisses atheists and “desperate People” alike; ironically contradicting his own endeavour of reporting his “vision” by accusing them of false assumptions by disapproving of “the Use they make of it”. This would not be so much bad Consequence, it was not always followed by a worse; namely, that when they have prevailed with themselves to believe there is no Devil, the next Thing is, and they soon come to it, That there is no God, and so Atheism takes its rise in the same Sink, with a Carelessness about Futurity.

That the narrator should say that having visions is preferable to not having a positive belief in God is consistent with his other comments (see above). What he worries about is not so much the fact that one can imagine things, but that one can convince oneself, that is, “prevail with” oneself, not to believe. The narrator adopts a stance very similar in voice and tone to Glanvill. In History of Apparitions, by contrast, the narrator – Defoe’s satirical alter ego Andrew Moreton – takes a less sympathetic stance toward the “desperate People” mentioned in AV: “The ridiculous Part discredits the real Part, and it being so surfeiting to our Reason to hear the first Part, we throw off our

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Patience, and will nothing at all of it. It is true we should not do thus; the Reality of the Thing, abstracted from these distracted and enthusiastick Notions, is not lessen’d” (HA, 291, 294, original 1726 edition). Obviously, that the narrator of HA stresses that there is a “reality of the thing”, in other words, that the existence and substance of spirits is by no means dismissed, is inescapable. But the persona of HA also absolutely emphasizes that a belief such as this should be formed rationally, by relying on reason rather than on “enthusiastic notions”. By comparison, the Robinson persona of AV dismisses the relevance of the question whether or not a belief is in some way rationally grounded, as he belittles the fact that suffering from a delusion is not the same as holding a belief or conviction. One can only conclude that the narrative voice of AV is that of an enthusiast. If this is true, then Defoe’s concept of the imagination, as it comes into play in his tracts and fictions, may indicate the degree of satirical disengagement with his subject matter that he is willing to adopt. On his deserted island, Robinson Crusoe lives through episodes that seem like supernatural intrusions into his life. When he finds exactly one footprint on the beach, he is understandably startled and assumes at first that he must have been visited by the devil. The belief in supernatural interventions in this world is at odds with a religious understanding of the world. According to Emile Durkheim, a definition of the supernatural is useful in order to approach the concept of the religious; essentially he argues that the two ideas are often confused but need to be separated. Durkheim explains that “in order to think of the idea of the supernatural it is not enough to witness unexpected events; these events also have to be perceived as impossible, that is, as irreconcilable with such an order as appears to us, rightly or no, as the order of things” (50). Furthermore, Durkheim notes that the idea of the supernatural is a fairly modern one and presupposes the idea of nature. In his words, religious concepts do not above all serve to explain and express what is the exception and abnormality of the order of the world, but on the contrary what is continuous and regular. To put it in basic terms: The gods serve much less to account for the monstrosities, the extraordinary and the anomalies, but rather to account for the common course of the universe, the movements of the stars, the rhythms of the seasons, the yearly growth of plants and so on. It is not true then that the concept of the religious is the same as the concepts of the extraordinary and the unforeseen. (50)

To deny the unforeseen and extraordinary is a way of asserting one’s religious identity.

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But perhaps the most illustrative episode occurs when the grain grows on Robinson’s island of its own accord, seemingly a miracle, Robinson thinks of the incident as miraculous at first because it seems impossible: It is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my thoughts on this occasion; I had hitherto acted upon no religious foundation at all, indeed I had very few notions of religion in my head, or had entertain’d any sense of any thing that had befallen me, otherwise than as chance, or as we lightly say, what pleases God; without so much as enquiring into the end of Providence in these things, or his order in governing events in the world: But after I saw barley grow there …. It startled me strangely, and I began to suggest, that God had miraculously caus’d this grain to grow without any help of seed sown. (RC, 63; my emphases)

The choice of words suggest that his “lack” of religion throws Robinson into “astonishment and confusion”. The combination of two negatives, having no religious concepts and having no understanding of the situation, suggests that a religious understanding will give Robinson rationality. For his idea that grain would grow without seed is irrational. Subsequently, Robinson realises that the plants had sprouted from seed he had to throw away. Looking back on his younger self, he observes that since the occurrence was “common”, his “religious thankfulness” “abated” (64). He concludes that when the “grain miracle” happened, he had misinterpreted the miracle, as it was not a miracle that the grain would have sprouted but that it ended up with him on the island, after he had lost so much (ibid). The episode thus reiterates the point that it is possible to interpret the natural world as providential. As he concludes narration of this episode, Robinson retains the word “miraculous” but he shifts it into a simile. He tells us “I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen Providence, as if it had been miraculous” (64). With this last rhetorical movement he asserts the rationality of his convictions. One need add that the Crusoe character of the travelogue differs from the Crusoe voice of AV. A Journal of the Plague Year exhibits an intriguing mixture of rational and moralist commentary. H.F. recounts the episode of a man claiming that he has seen a ghost. The episode precedes H.F.’s assessment of the situation. The man is clearly hallucinating, but he manages to delude the people around him into believing that there is a ghost. Laconically, H.F. observes: I look’d earnestly every way, and at the very Moment, that this man directed, but could not see the least Appearance of any thing; but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the People the Vapours in abundance, and sent them away trembling, and frighted; till at

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length, few People, that knew of it car’d to go thro’ that Passage … This Ghost, as the poor Man affirm’d, made Signs to the Houses, and to the Ground, and to the People, plainly intimating … that Abundance of the People, should be buried in that Church-Yard; as indeed happen’d: But that he saw such Aspects, I must acknowledg, I never believ’d; nor could I see any thing of it my self, tho’ I look’d most earnestly to it, if possible. (JPY, 24)

H.F. offers a pathological explanation for the man’s behaviour: “these things serve to shew, how far the People were really overcome with Delusions” (24). Moreover, the image of the man predicting the future as he sees and interprets the apparition is a version of the man possessed and inspired. While clearly critical of the idea, H.F. does not seem to dismiss it entirely, for, as he says, the enthusiast was proven right in his predictions. Still, H.F. does not see the ghost. If H.F. seeks out the opportunities to see such things, he never finds actual proof. As the empirical narrator, H.F. takes note of both criminal uses and delusional or enthusiastic responses to the supernatural. H.F.’s description brings in both John Webster’s categories of deception and Glanvill’s view that to be falling for a deception of any kind is a sign of weakness: But there was still another Madness beyond all this, which may serve to give an Idea of the distracted humour of the poor People at that Time; and this was their following a worse Sort of Deceivers than any of these [that is, quack doctors and cunning men]; for these petty Thieves only deluded them to pick their Pockets, and get their Money; in which their Wickedness …lay chiefly on the Side of the Deceiver’s deceiving, not upon the Deceived. (JPY, 31; my emphasis)

Having inserted this moralist comment, H.F. then enumerates the different types of frauds, such as magic charms and enchantments that are offered to ward off infection. in this Part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the People deceiv’d, or equally in them both; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was not the Hand of God, but a kind of Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them (JPY, 31-2)

H.F. remarks that he might say more on this behaviour, but that he would only report fact and leave the comments aside. Still, he notes as laconically as above

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that many of those “poor people” died despite the charms and went to their graves with the amulets and philtres still on them (ibid.). The frauds who claim to have the preternatural abilities to create spells and charms prey on the superstitions and folk beliefs that are still current at the time. As H.F. tells the reader, their magic is a kind of white magic. It is protection against the “evil Spirit”. Such common superstition violates orthodox belief on two levels, H.F. is implying; it credits the devil with undue power against the Providential order and it puts faith in magic. As we will discuss in the next chapter, though, H.F. also believes in a kind of magical access to Providence when he performs “bibliomancy”. H.F.’s concern is, then, that people put their trust in what he calls “unperforming Creatures” who give them bad advice and relieve them of their money. The “poor People” being thus mislead do not have the chance to “awaken” from their “stupidity”. Their minds were “stupid”, and “dull”, even before the epidemic, but in the face of imminent death, they are “amazed” as well. In this moment they are possessed with fear and might be open to repentance. H.F.’s report is thus biased, as he offers a religious as well as social interpretation of the poor’s behaviour. He is pleased to tell his reader that Many Consciences were awakened; many hard Hearts melted into Tears; many a penitent Confession was made of Crimes long concealed: would wound the Souls of any Christian, to have heard the dying Groans of many despairing Creature, and none durst come near to comfort them: Many a Robbery, many a Murder, was then confest aloud, and no Body to Record the Accounts of it. (JPY, 33)

H.F.’s description of the psychological state of the common people is fascinating. On the one hand, it is completely prejudiced against their “weakness”. In H.F.’s religious and spiritual frame of reference, their “dullness” is a kind of laziness and reproaches them for thinking of their body rather than their spirit. H.F. presents them as unwilling to recognise the truth of the situation, for they are under a kind of delusion, then. On the other hand, as he claims that part of the population realised the desperate situation and the futility of charms and potions against the disease, he also acknowledges that there was no one to actually take note of their conversion. Ironically, this presents us a narrator verging on enthusiasm, and more interested in telling a moral tale than in giving us a report, and represents a departure from the empirical mode of narration. However, H.F.’s stance toward the people’s spiritual situation also implies his opinion that “reality” may be a distraction from “true knowledge” of spiritual

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salvation. If H.F. adopts a “sceptical vision” of reality, it is religiously motivated and concerns the correct interpretation of reality. Indeed, H.F. attacks the publications of astrologers who attributed the plague to the stars and, above all, made false predictions that terrified people (JPY, 25).11 Still, H.F.’s rational discussion of the people falling victim to superstition and delusion is not just a comment on his countrymen’s religion. It insists on uncovering false hypotheses about reality. In Journal of the Plague Year, the question of how to represent reality reflects on the problem of how to represent truth. Yet, to his mind, the two are not the same. H.F.’s paradoxical attitude toward the epistemologies of representation and religion is elucidated by his experience of the sublime. When he sees the mass grave of his parish, he states that “it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no Tongue can express” (JPY, 54 sic). As for Robinson, Moll, and Roxana, who perceives the sublime in a negative relief, words are not enough for H.F. Similarly, when he describes the effects of the epidemic on child-birth, there is a sense that words are insufficient and thus he provides the numbers (JPY, 96-7). As H.F. tells the reader, he cannot provide the exact percentages of infant death in relation to the population, but he can give the absolute numbers which indicate that the number of infant deaths has doubled because of the plague. All he can do is make probable “conjectures” (ibid.). The experience of mortality and the fragility of human life is rendered as sublime. The sublime, however, is linked not only to terror and fear, but to grief. As H.F. recounts the facts of infant mortality, he also tells the story of a man who died of grief when he lost wife and child in child-birth, because of the Plague (98). Indeed, the transition from a sublime fear to a sublime grief turns H.F.’s report of the Plague into a memorial for the victims. Thus, he manages to solve the tension between fact-rendering and truth-rendering letting it flow into a communal fiction of loss and survival. While deception is a topic in Journal of the Plague Year, and H.F. is constantly testing his own assumptions and other people’s hypotheses, what is imagined in this fiction is ultimately a shared truth. In conclusion, Defoe’s synthesis of the seventeenth-century views of supernaturalism allows him to negotiate enthusiasm and rationality. With the 11 “To this [that is, the stories of insane and deluded people seeing ghosts] … the Astrologers added Stories of the Conjunctions of Planets in a malignant Manner, and with a mischievous Influence; one of which Conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, in October; and the other in November; and they filled the Poeples Heads with Predictions on these Signs of the Heavens, intimating, that those Conjunctions foretold Drought, Famine, and Pestilence; in the two first of them, however, they were entirely mistaken…”. (JPY, 25)

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possibility of delusion and error constantly acknowledged, Defoe’s fictions paint a realistic picture of the struggle of the voice of reason. On the other hand, visions and dreams are not simply dismissed as unreason. Defoe does not work with a simple binary opposition between reason and irrationality. Likewise, delusions are considered extraordinary, and possibly a result of enthusiasm, and as such questionable. However, delusions are not disqualified as pathological; rather, they fall outside the rational frame of reference. Stepping outside the frame is considered an advantage in the pursuit of knowledge. Still, the perception of reality is overwritten by the delusion. If Defoe in fact remonstrates any overt sceptical position, his appropriation of the misleading qualities of the “imaginative faculty” compel him to emphasize that it is possible to collect facts and numbers to verify what may have been biased by the play of the imagination.

4 Describing Emotional Conflict and Continuity in Defoe’s Narratives Journal of the Plague Year, Robinson Crusoe and Roxana I am in a serious awful Expectation, of the Judgment of God approaching this Nation… and this not from any Enthusiasm or Prophetick Spirit … but from many Rational, and, I think, well-grounded Considerations, as well founded upon Things at Home, as Things Abroad, and especially on the visible Approach of the Plague for eight Years past, at least one Hundred Miles every Year … We shall not escape DANIEL DEFOE, THE REVIEW OF NO. 11, SEPTEMBER 6, 1712; QUOT. IN LANDA, P. 13

4.1 I NTRODUCTION In his supernatural tracts, Defoe exploits the singular nature of experience, as his seventeenth-century predecessors did. In his fictional works, the protagonists typically live through extraordinary situations and events, which are qualified by the protagonists’ evaluation of them. Even though the title pages announce “remarkable occurrences,” “strange” “surprising” “adventures,” and “vast variety”, they are far from presenting the reader with a fantastic or uncanny tale. Nonetheless, Defoe plays with the strange and marvellous, advertising the singular nature of strange events. With the three narratives Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year and Roxana, the subject matter and its narrative form share certain features with Defoe’s supernatural tracts. The discourse on the

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supernatural provides a means to analyse the way in which evidence can be structured. For evidence is typically narrative and the supernaturalists are concerned with the question of reliability. Arguably, the fictions not only display the same patterns of deliberation and interpretation, but follow the same assumptions about the imagination and the representation of emotional states. The three fictions discussed below display paradigmatic transformations. Despite their firm rooting in the post-Reformation Protestant religious identity and their representation of Providence and the linearity characteristic of it, each of the three fictions retains circular patterns. The “transformed supernatural” provides the language to picture the emotional experience of the protagonists. Moreover, by thus describing emotions, the narrators can assert continuity despite disruptive conflictual experience (cf. Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge). Ideas of the prophetic, magical and demonic frame emotions like fear; they provide the structure to alleviate confusion and dissonance. Indeed, Defoe seems most interested in two aspects associated with the supernatural. The first is prophecy, which can be aligned with the ability to anticipate the outcomes of events and decisions. The second is the emotional response in the face of the inexplicable and unexplained. Both aspects are apparently contrary to each other. The first, prophecy, establishes a continuity of events, and, as a consequence, a continuity of experience. It alleviates the fears and unease of the subject in the face of strange events. In itself, this seems irrational, since one can define the very essence of strangeness by its unexpected nature. The second aspect, the emotional response, describes the recognition of a disruption and discontinuity. These two contrary movements inform Defoe’s fictions. The first translates the bias of hindsight into the structure of the plot. The second gives an emotional form to the conflicts encountered by the protagonists, and is reflected by giving comprehensible forms to the experience of fear and anxiety. In religion, the transformation of the supernatural is a change in paradigms, a crossing-over from a world of supernatural beliefs in magic and spirits to a world of religion. The teleology of human destiny replaces the idea of ever-returning cycles of beginnings and endings (typically found in astrological concepts of the cosmos, or in the return of the seasons). Such is the distinction offered by Emile Durkheim (in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life). As a consequence, history is conceptualized as a linear process of gradual change and progress, which is precisely the view Defoe puts forward in A System of Magick. This “decline of magic” was already mentioned above: it is discussed by Keith Thomas in regard to the English culture of the seventeenth century, and contradicted by Rodney Baine in regard to Daniel Defoe. It is refined and

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revisited in Lorraine Daston’s work, and in Katherine Clark’s discussion of Defoe, as was also explored above. According to Rodney Baine, Defoe exploited the idea of foreseeing events in his political journalism where he assumed the voice of a prophet. In this context, Defoe uses the mask of the prophet to play the role of the wise man warning his people when he sees them do wrong. Such a self-styling bears the rich tones of enthusiasm. The voice of the prophet serves to establish an authority to which his reading public would appeal for insight. Moreover, Defoe’s journalistic mask shows his belief in the need for an authority as well as his apparently relaxed attitude to emulating religious archetypes (cf. Baine 1968: 109-130). When turning to Defoe’s fictions, one notes an analogous tendency to turn dreams and visions into metaphors, but yet to allow for the possibility of their “reality”. If in the next chapter, anticipation will be conceived of in terms of deliberation and probabilistic certainty, in the present discussion, anticipation is a kind of foreknowledge that Defoe’s protagonists expect of themselves, especially since they judge themselves with the bias of hindsight. The anxious deliberating of options, the hesitation prior to taking an action, the fear as events evolve, and lastly, the unease felt looking back on a situation, might be described by “confusion”, especially since confusion does not separate thought from emotion. In order to talk about the narrator’s development, it makes sense to introduce a more precise term to describe the anxiety felt by the narrator when he or she assesses a previous decision appears inconsistent with his or her values or ideas. Leon Festinger suggests employing the word “dissonance”. According to his definition, “dissonance” describes psychological discomfort experienced because of an inconsistency between what one did and what one knew would have been more desirable. Festinger observes that when there is dissonance, its “presence […] gives rise to pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance”; and he concludes that dissonance “acts in the same way as a state of drive or need or tension” (1957: 18). Dissonance is obviously not the same as discontinuity, but with Defoe’s protagonists one finds that they are usually responsible for their own experience of discontinuity because of decisions they had previously taken. Therefore, the feeling of dissonance and the sense of a discontinuity go hand in hand. Defoe’s psychological insight into decision making shows when one considers how he emphasizes how a character like Robinson, like Moll, or like Roxana, does not consider alternatives while the situation is ongoing, but only afterwards looking back on the event. As Festinger points out, studies “[c]ertainly […] lend support (but do not finally settle as fact) to the idea that a systematic spreading apart of the alternatives does not occur during conflict, but

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that this process does occur after a decision as a reaction to the existence of dissonance” (Festinger 1964: 19). However, readers of Journal of the Plague Year will be well aware that Defoe also presents characters capable of such foresight, meaning that H.F. deliberately slows down his deliberations in order to be able to judge and choose prudently. One might call the representation of such behaviour in a narrative a type of pragmatic idealism. We will consider parabolic stories not from the viewpoint of dialogic narration and bias, but from the viewpoint of decision-making with our eyes fixed on their conflictual content. While in the other sections of this book, the concern was to show the influence of supernaturalism on Defoe’s conceptions of knowledge, self and the mind, the present chapter attempts to set the subjective relationship of the individual to the supernatural into context of the uncertainty of human experience, in order to shed a light on the cognitive and emotive states involved. Both the emotional language of the narrators and their strategies to describe and deal with mental excitement suggest firstly a preoccupation with fear, and secondly a preference for the description of the physical signs of emotion. Defoe does not adopt a type of emotivism, nor does he subscribe to any form of moral relativism. However, his texts demonstrate that he does not represent a prescriptive ethics as easy to live by. On the contrary, the emotional turmoil of his fictional characters shows the degree of distress consequent to living by a prescriptive ethics, which might in fact be understood as a critique of such prescriptivism. By adopting the fictional mode to explore these issues, Defoe draws attention to the fact that decision-making is a process of conflict, in which a dialogic relationship to the transcendent is paramount. The underlying debate then is whether there is room for development or whether the world is determined.

4.2 T RANSFORMATIONS OF THE P ROPHETIC V OICE : T HE C ASE OF R OBINSON C RUSOE Despite its empiricist materialist mask, Robinson Crusoe is an allegory, when read within the context of the discourse on the supernatural. The allegory of Robinson can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, RC is an allegory of the human condition: man stranded on a solitary island must struggle for survival and build himself a future. The second allegorical content of Robinson Crusoe concerns the spiritual development of humankind: man wants to find faith and redemp-

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tion. Both aspects have their separate merits. In fact, the reader is invited to merge both interpretations. With Robinson’s insistent and repetitive expression of his concern for his own spiritual welfare and the lesson to be drawn from his experience, the latter understanding of the allegory as a reflection on spiritual development is convincing, especially also because it allows the reader to maintain a relatively consistent correlation between Robinson’s real-life experience and a theological interpretation of it. Moreover, the relationship between immanent experience and transcendent meaning is quite clear and evident to the readership. There is in fact little reason to introduce an additional level of commentary in order to guide the reader to the correct lesson, even though Defoe himself seems to have thought otherwise as he wrote Robinson’s Serious Reflections. When we read RC an allegory of the human condition, we notice the narrator’s insistence on virtue: man will find contentment and prosperity in following the virtues of prudence, moderation and diligence avoiding the temptations of ambition. This is the middle station of the father’s advice in the beginning of the novel. In Robinson’s world, as time passes on the island, Robinson has to work very hard to survive. He does not just learn how to make bread and other necessities, he also has to learn that it is up to him to produce what he needs. He tells the reader that “now I work’d for my bread” (RC, 94). Among the first things he learns is thus the virtue of diligence. Then, after Robinson has built the first canoe, he discovers that he has been imprudent in planning his undertaking, because the boat is too heavy to move. He then observes: “This griev’d me heartily, and now I saw, tho’ too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost; and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it” (RC, 102). Experience then teaches him prudence, whereas moderation is forced upon him, as he has to acknowledge that in his isolation there is simply no threat of the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet” (RC, 102, sic.). Robinson is wrong, however. When he finds evidence of the presence of “savages” his good conduct is overturned (RC, 122-130, 131-139). Not only is he frightened, he also feels called upon to judge the behaviour of the savages. His role changes from reporter and witness to judge. It is only after this process of deliberation that Robinson may return to the contentment of the virtues he has learnt. An allegorical reading of Robinson Crusoe has two problems. Firstly, in the world of the novel, Defoe as the author becomes God, and by assuming this role, the attempt to offer a justification of the ways of God to man – to quote Milton – is undermined. As Lukasc demonstrated, the novelistic hero, especially when his or hers is the dominant narrative perspective, is subject to a demiurge, who

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controls the world the novel. Similarly, as Leo Damrosch points out that Defoe takes on the role of God in Robinson Crusoe. Secondly, while the relationship between matter and transcendence may seem to be clear and indeed understandable as part of the allegory, this relationship constitutes a crucial concern in the novel. In many instances, the narrator reads events as direct incursions of the divine into his own world. He sees the divine immanent in his surroundings. However, a recurrent motif of the novel is the deconstruction of the idea that there is an actual physical intervention of the supernatural into the world of man. So, the relationship between matter and transcendence as a complementary pair is first undermined and then reasserted. As mentioned above, we learn from Robinson’s argument with his father that the virtues of the middle station may ultimately be understood to be the topic of the novel. Living a life of temperance, moderation, and quietness will give you health, society, diversion, pleasure, and indeed prosperity. The first scene, Robinson’s conflict with the father, structures the novel, not only because he considers his disobedience toward the father as his “original sin”, but also because the father is attributed with prophetic ability. All later events involving natural violence, such as the storms Robinson lives through, are read as supernatural incursions fulfilling the father’s words. Indeed, the narrator puts forward such an interpretation repeatedly. It is clear that as Robinson reads his own life as a fulfilment of prophecy, his own decisions cannot be considered free or independent. They are always in violation of the father’s ideal state. If one identifies the father figure as a manifestation of Providence – which is not farfetched – most of Robinson’s actions are in violation of this order. Robinson becomes a type of Adam, re-enacting the loss of Paradise because of his disobedience. Set into context with Defoe’s tract The Political History of the Devil, Defoe’s debt to Milton and indeed his re-writing of Milton give grounds to read Robinson within the tradition of theodicy. Novak notes that “of major economic and theological significance throughout the novel is Crusoe’s belief that his refusal to obey the wishes of his father that he follow the even life of the middle class is the reason that God punishes him, first with slavery and then with isolation” (1983: 27). Political concerns aside, Crusoe’s argument with his father also reflects on John Locke’s treatment of the question of paternal authority. In Second Treatise of Government, Locke holds that the relationship between parents and children have both parties under obligation to each other, so that paternal authority should not be executed unilaterally only, and should certainly not be absolute (1980: 3042). In the course of the novel, Crusoe’s attitude towards his father and towards the idea of authority develops to a certain extent in that the idea of absolute

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power is ironically inflected: for instance, when Crusoe sees himself as the sovereign of his people, consisting of dog and parrot. However, the theological significance lies in the analogy between the figure of the father and God, the father taking God’s place on earth, at least in Crusoe’s imagination of the world. Formally, the allegorical reading of the novel is undermined if the analogy between God and father figure is questioned, in that the interpretation of the allegory might be shifted from seeing it as the spiritual journey of the individual to seeing it as the spiritual struggle of the individual with doubt. Furthermore, while the protagonist may be living in an experimental environment on the island, it may be useful to bear in mind that Robinson is not an empirical narrator, in the sense that he does not question his own perception of his environment. However, as a narrator he mixes normative and descriptive views when it comes to his own decisions, and thus is empirical in the sense that he takes note of his own deliberations. As in his other novels, Defoe puts his model into practice that relates decision processes and judgment to imagination and error in order to resolve the experience of dissonance. Robinson Crusoe begins with an explanation of what triggered the protagonist’s story. Coming from parents educated and prosperous enough to support their children, Robinson is under no economic or social pressure to find employment or to go abroad as a trader. The first pages are taken up with the conflict between father and son, in which the father tries to convince Robinson that in terms of the stratification of society he is perfectly placed. Neither “high” nor “low”, there is no need for social ambition, and no need to be harassed by either poverty or the obligations of the upper classes. As his father tells him, it “must be [his] meer fate or fault that must hinder” Robinson to be “easy and happy in the world” (7). It is noteworthy that the father’s language effectively describes the Robinson who would turn his back on such amenities and such happiness, as a tragic hero. After all, it is the tragic hero who stands to lose everything and has to accept responsibility for his loss, as it is his own fault. More in keeping with a romantic concept of heroism (hinted at by “my head began to be fill’d very early with rambling thoughts” (5), Robinson feels that he must venture out and travel the seas. Robinson describes himself effectively as thoughtless and imprudent. His father warns him that “if [he] did take this foolish step, God would not bless [him], and [he] would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in [his] recovery” (7). The argument with his son makes the father cry. Although one can only speculate, the father’s emotional response seems to be an expression of helplessness in the face of the fact that he is not able to reach through to his son. Robinson is affected by his

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father’s apparent sadness, but the emotional moment does not make Robinson change his mind. However, Robinson is never able to forget his father’s words warning him of the regrets he is later to experience. Robinson leaves and is on his first ship, which nearly founders in a storm. After the storm, Robinson tells the Captain of the ship his story. To the Captain it is clear that the storm was an immediate punishment of Robinson’s disobedience towards his father. Indeed, it is the Captain who gives Robinson the idea that his father’s warning might be prophetic. The Captain advises Robinson to go back home and “not to tempt Providence further” (14). He considers Robinson as the bringer of ill luck and would not have him back on his ship. At this point, Robinson is too ashamed to go home, however, and his adventures continue. As the story develops, the narrative suggests that despite his regrets and his repentance, Robinson’s character cannot develop. That is, having recognised his flaws, Robinson is still incapable of changing. This is a logical continuation of the idea of a predetermined nature (which is not be mistaken with the concept of predestination). As one can argue, it is not an idea that Defoe is able to contain. It contradicts the idea of conversion, or fundamental change of character, and development. Interestingly, Robinson, the narrator, tells us immediately after the father has warned Robinson that he would regret going away, that the father’s words were “truly prophetick, tho’ I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself” (7). This narrative comment, which inserts the perspective of Robinson’s older self, shows that it is Robinson’s later interpretation that sees prophecy in the father’s words. Moreover, this idea is given to Robinson by the Captain. It is not his own. Yet, it establishes causality between Robinson’s dispute with his father and the events of his life. The father’s prophetic voice can be seen as a structuring device of the novel. Not only does it allow the author to repeat thematic problems at different points, it also gives the story coherence. It instils the idea of necessary consequence in the reader, which in this case is also a moral question. It raises the point that one should follow the father’s lead. It is obviously possible to read this conflict as an assertion of patriarchal male authority. However, the father’s voice is juxtaposed with the idea that it may be nature or fate that compels Robinson to ignore his father’s advice. Fate and the father’s authority thus represent two conflicting concepts. While it would appear that to follow the father’s lead does not give Robinson much choice or control in how he may lead his life, the decision would be rational on his part nonetheless. To be ruled by fate and nature, in contrast, would be to be determined by forces beyond one’s control. This reading is affirmed by the prolepsis on the very first page of the novel, where Robinson

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tells us that “there seem’d to be something fatal in that propension of Nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me” (5). Here the father’s prophetic warning and the choiceless determinism of having given in to one’s “nature” complement each other to bolster the sense of coherence of the story. The regret over wrong decisions becomes a recurrent theme early on. In Brasil for example, Robinson tells us that “and now I found more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury. But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right, was no great wonder” (30).1 But such mistakes are not singular in Robinson’s world and “no great wonder”. Similarly, when contemplating the blindness of his former self, the narrator reminisces that “I used to say, I liv’d just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had no body there but himself” (30). It is crucial that two aspects are combined. On the one hand, Robinson points out how likely he is to take a wrong decision. On the other hand, he is in a world of self-fulfilling prophecies. Thus, one could say that his own decisions entail the worst scenario he could envisage for himself. It is crucial that it is exactly the kind of scenario he thought up and not any kind of bad situation. It stresses that his decisions are pre-determined leading to foreseeable consequences. The island becomes emblematic of the determinism of nature. It is possible to show the plausibility of this reading by consulting another text. In Serious Reflections, Crusoe observes: “All these reflections are just history of a state of forced confinement, which in my real history is represented by a confined retreat in an island; and it is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not” (Preface). Critics like Max Novak read the Preface to the Serious Reflections in terms of Defoe’s ambiguous attitude towards fiction. Novak argues that Defoe saw uses and advantages in fictional story telling, and holds that Defoe distinguished between realism [that is, resemblance to truth] and symbolism [that 1

Daniel Carey observes that critics of the novel usually fail to address the question how Xury becomes Crusoe’s property to sell (“Robinson Crusoe, Slavery and Postcolonial Theory”, 114). In fact, as Carey points out, Crusoe does not explain why he felt entitled to sell Xury, nor does the text suggest that there is anything wrong with owning or selling a human being. As Carey states “at no point in Crusoe’s burgeoning reflections on providence and religious duty does he connect his misfortune with divine judgement on slaving specifically” (115). Crusoe’s attitude to slavery is motivated by economic considerations. Yet, he attributes the failure of his venture into slave trade not to its unjustness but to his inability to be content with his success up that point in his life (cf. Carey 115).

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is, a (moral) application to human life] (“Defoe’s Theory of Fiction”, 654f.). Certainly, Defoe was concerned only to tell stories where the “fable” would yield a lesson. He never tires of asserting his moralist intentions and never fails to point out that a fictional story, a romance, is readable and recommendable only when it contains a “moral” that Defoe considers useful to the reader. But maybe more pertinent to the argument here is that Crusoe stresses that human life is a state of confinement. In addition, as the following episode illuminates, decisions entail personal responsibility. Robinson has just agreed to leave Brazil in order to go to Africa and buy slaves. In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects, and keep up my plantation; had I used half as much prudence to have look’d into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done, and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards; to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to my self. But I was hurried on, and obey’d blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my reason … (Robinson Crusoe, 34; my emphases)

As before it is remarkable how the narrator combines his apparent inadequacy at taking decisions with a normative ethical view, on the one hand, and with a pessimism of human nature, on the other hand. He links the probability of how his life might have developed, had he stayed, with the thought that he should have known better, given how his father’s prophecy looms over him. He also points out that his decision was not rationally sound, in that the normal dangers of a voyage at sea already outweigh all the possible benefits of the journey. It seems typical of an assessment such as this that the recourse to ethics is normative. The modal verb “ought” implies that there is a strict moral imperative that regulates such a decision. Prudence is better than unnecessary risk. It is not only a moral decision; it is also a rational decision. Significantly, this normative rhetoric only works in the narrator’s hindsight perspective. Furthermore, Robinson’s phrasing is extremely revealing: “he was hurried on”. To use a passive construction suggests an almost supernatural explanation, as the phrase resembles the language of inspiration. Clearly, the narrator denies choice in this instance. One would expect old Robinson to ridicule the folly of his younger self. In addition, playing on the idea of inspiration, Robinson makes sure that the reader understands that “fancy” has the role of the seducer. “Reason” and “fancy” thus attain angelic and demonic qualities, which is

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underlined by Robinson’s interpellation of them, as if they were entities outside the human mind. The protagonist’s blindness is a metaphor for his failure to think critically and rationally. The appeal to rationality and order only serve to show the extent of Robinson’s divergence from his own expectations. To resolve his feeling of dissonance and confusion at his decisions, Robinson turns to his father’s prophetic anticipation of events, which provides the order he cannot himself establish.

4.3 T RANSFORMATIONS OF THE M AGICAL : T HE C ASE F EAR IN A J OURNAL OF THE P LAGUE Y EAR

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If it is “blindness of fancy” that prevents Robinson from acknowledging the risks of his decision and makes him willing to exchange a secure life for uncertainty of circumstances, the narrator of Journal of the Plague Year is more rational. In fact, H.F. is characterised by his concern about the rationality of his decisions. Indeed, H.F.’s anxiety about his rationality is illustrated by his encounters with the irrational. But if one were to define the “Other” of rationality in Journal of the Plague Year as it is focalised in the perspective of the narrator, one would see that the irrational is hardly separable from negative basic emotions, in particular, fear and panic. The emotional as irrational stands in the way of prudence as the intellectual virtue of the mind. For if reason can be seen as a virtue, it would take the form of prudence. Defoe’s interest in fear seems to centre on the breakdown of cognitive as well as emotional abilities. Fear is not only the result of an uncertain situation but also the cause of a failure of judgment. As a general uneasiness, such anxiety recalls John Locke’s comment on determination in which he states that action require not only decision but also determination, the prerequisite for which is the desire to act (cf. Locke, Essay II.xxi.31 and 35 (second edition); cf. Foot 2002: 120f.). To the mind of the narrator, acting upon fear would mean to be acting irrationally. Initially, this worry leads H.F. to refuse to act at all and to take on the role of the observer and historian. It is indeed tempting to read the beginning of The Journal of the Plague Year as a criticism of the historical mode. Writing history requires judgment, such would seem the message. Furthermore, fear is an expression of a moral uncertainty. When fear in fact describes the failure of reason or a deeper moral ambivalence, it represents a theological or philosophical subtext. Indeed, the narrator is adopting an orthodox religious stance, as can be seen in the initial conflict between H.F. and his brother. Various critics have taken note of the association of anxiety and

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confusion in Defoe’s work and have discussed this episode in terms of its religious contents (cf. Hunter 1966; Starr 1966; Zimmerman, 1975), but when focussing on the actual decision process one can see that Defoe asserts his supernaturalist paradigm of questioning one’s reasoning. As the narrator of the Journal is very much concerned with controlling his own fears, he tries to limit his own uncertainty by collecting as much information as he can. The fearful reactions of the citizens are object of his observations as much as he comments on his own anxiety. However, the language he employs to interpret what he sees, tends to overwrite empirical observation. Overall one can argue that the representation of fear in A Journal of the Plague Year supports a rhetoric of virtues, especially of prudence and selfcontrol, similar to the allegorical content of RC. Observing people leaving the city, he tells us that “This was a terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a Sight which I cou’d not but look on from Morning to Night; for indeed there was nothing else of Moment to be seen, it fill’d me with very serious Thoughts of the Misery that was coming upon the City, and the unhappy Condition of those that would be left in it.” Obviously, H. F. is talking as a tradesman who foresees the breakdown of the city. In addition, his comment is typical for the mood of his observations, since it shows his general curiosity. If story-telling and keeping tallies are the crucial narrative devices of the Journal, seeing and hearing are the central activities of the narrator. We might be tempted to read the Journal as a proto-sentimentalist text. We could argue that moral teaching happens by empathising as witnesses of suffering, and that feeling with the others’ suffering lead to acts of charity and compassion. This may indeed be an aim of the text. But H.F. is not a sentimental hero. He is not concerned with his sensibility so much as with his cognitive ability to assess danger. To his mind, his fear is irrational and must be put aside. In a city delivered to hope and fear rather than knowledge and precautionary measures, H.F. becomes the spokesman for the middle class merchants. After all, his foremost concern is to protect his own business. Indeed, H.F. does not think that the plague will be as bad as people’s imagination make it be. In the course of the journal H.F. actually defends the Lord Mayor’s management of the epidemic; but here at the beginning, it is the government’s apparent decision not to acknowledge the possibility of an epidemic that fuels the general panic. As Everett Zimmerman points out, “this pattern of diminishing trust in external authority, and the consequent abandoning of the individual to his own possibly false perceptions, continues” (288). It thus only leaves one question to the subject, which is, what the most prudent way of behaviour might be.

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Consequently, the narrator then focuses on his own situation and reaction. Whether or not to leave is a question of theological debate. It is a question of how to interpret divine providence and mercy. Whereas his brother leaves to escape the disease, H.F. decides to remain in the city. In his brother’s opinion, H.F.’s attitude is nothing else than fatalism: and he tells H.F. that “he should take it as an Intimation from Heaven that he should not go out of Town, only because he could not hire a horse to go, or his fellow was run away … was ridiculous.” The brother’s attitude of rational Christianity serves as a foil to H.F.’s decision process. In fact, H.F. is torn between his own religious views and his rational assessment (the government’s unclear policy would seem to reflect on the same conflict.). H.F.’s initial fatalism would seem in contradiction to his stance toward the people he meets in the plague-ridden city, since the narrator very clearly supports a practical attitude towards the disease. However, this story about decision-making is really a story about not being able to decide. H.F. very willingly gives up his own free judgment and relies on what he calls particular providence. We cannot help but wonder at how to read his seemingly imprudent trust in fate: H.F. tells us he does not leave because of the lack of horses and because his servant has left without him. He interprets this impracticality as a sign from Heaven. But then, the servant lets him down because H.F. cannot make up his mind. As with RC, processes of decision are repetitive and elaborate that it is impossible to overcome a certain set of mind. After his argument with his brother, the deciding moment for him to stay is where he practices so-called bibliomancy, which takes place after his argument with his brother. And this is a way of divining God’s will that comes close to white magic. If taken seriously, bibliomancy is a way to gain some certainty on a situation. H.F.’s decision does not necessarily call his reliability into doubt; however, it reveals that under these uncertain circumstances, H.F. prefers to take refuge in the certainty of bibliomancy, and to take the risk of staying rather than accepting the uncertainty of his situation. Not only is this a moment of psychological insight where the narrator manages to convince himself of a truth to the point of self-deception, so that he may take a decision under risk rather than a decision under uncertainty, it also shows that even though completely logical to his mind, H.F. is as much under stress as the citizens that he describes. The ambivalence in H.F.’s is further portrayed when H.F. tells us that he falls ill which happens immediately after his decision to stay. The language of this passage is one of scientific observation. H.F. takes note that anyone ill would be thought to have the plague. And he tells us that his anxiety is tied exclusively to the possibility that it might be the plague. Denying fear of anything else but the real object, that is, the plague, H.F. adopts an attitude of scientific certainty

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toward the situation. By comparison to the initial conflict, there is no sense of indecision in this passage. In both passages H.F. does not subject himself to fear; obviously his trust in providence helps him not to feel too anxious.2 One could argue that precisely because H.F. depends on his trust in providence and precisely because he is as much victim to fear as anyone else – even if he is not aware of it himself – his advocacy of prudence, practical thinking and critical judgement receives further strength, as the means to overcome the flaws in his judgment. On the one hand, fear and anxiety are so fundamental to human experience that they are indeed defining of the human condition. On the other hand, there is a strong rhetorical undercurrent in Defoe’s narrative that fear is something that needs to be overcome. However, within the narrative of A Journal of the Plague Year we are made aware that fear can be a healthy and indeed necessary moment of human life. As in RC, the spiritual references in JPY include the religious, as defined by Durkheim, and the supernatural. As H. F. writes his journal observing other people’s convictions, his relationship to the supernatural is more subtly conflictual than Robinson. As was mentioned before, when he witnesses blind faith in others, he is ready to judge them irrational. In his own case, he is not as able to decide whether or not his beliefs are magical or religious. Zimmerman points out that Bibliomancy was a subject of controversy in Defoe’s time. It was commonly accepted that one might be divinely prompted through the Bible. However, arbitrarily selecting a passage from the Bible might also be a usurpation of a divine prerogative; the practice could result in a man’s choosing or accepting only that which is in accord with his own will. What ever Defoe thought of bibliomancy generally he calls attention here to a dubiety in H.F.’s method. (287)

As a kind of supernatural “science”, bibliomancy presents a difficulty. Not only does H. F. abandon his empirical attitude in this instance, he also replaces the new philosophy not with religion but with a magical practice. As Zimmerman mentions, H. F. in fact leaves out two verses. He is selective in his choice. The two missing verses are: ‘for he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep 2

At first, H.F.’s problem seems to be one of over-interpretation. Observing the world and reading the Bible he finds signs everywhere. Such signs need to be interpreted and acted upon. H.F.’s world is a world of meaningfulness; in such a world there is no point in running away. Making his narrator at least somewhat contradictory Defoe reenforces the notion that questioning stories is necessary.

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thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone’. According to Zimmerman, “[T]hese are of course the words that Satan quotes when tempting Christ to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, a temptation to presume on God’s mercy. Is H.F. to be commended for his trust in God or is he wrongfully presuming on God’s mercy?” What Zimmerman rightly points out here is that bibliomancy as an act of divination presumes to present its practitioner with an insight into the future. In addition, the episode undermines H.F.’s character as reliable rational observer. In her essay “Illness as Metaphor”, Susan Sontag observes that illness is the fantasies that we share about it, which are not real descriptions or geography but stereotypes. As Sontag says, illness is not a metaphor, and the best way of dealing with being ill is to get rid of the metaphoric thinking about it. Daniel Defoe’s Journal is in fact very much concerned with illness in its literal reality. Defoe’s notion of fear, however, when it becomes abstracted from its proper object, the actual threat of disease, when it is given a life of its own, when it fosters fantasies and delusions, is quite similar to Sontag’s description of illness, in that Defoe too seems to think that fear has positive connotations only when it is a direct response to a real situation, unattended by interpretation and abstraction. One might indeed claim that it is fear that attains the status of an illness. As the concept of a state of mind, however, it does not remain uncontested, but undergoes various redefinitions. Still, while fear may well be the result of believing in unfounded stories and fantasies about the plague and what may have caused it, and therefore to be resisted as well, fear is necessary in the world of the Journal. Indeed, the narrator’s critique of the people’s fear is that it leads them to imagine dangers where there are none and thus fear becomes a source of error. But H.F. does not stop there, he offers a kind of catalogue of the things feeding into the general atmosphere of anxiety. HF tells us that “the apprehension of the people were likewise strangely encreas’d by the Error of the times; in which, I think, the People, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to Prophesies and astrological conjurations, dreams and old Wives tales than ever they were before or since” (21). H.F. does not pretend to fully understand the phenomenon. Similarly, people pass on stories about murders, which H.F. unsuccessfully tries to verify. Next, people claim to see ghosts in the vicinity of the cemeteries. H.F. meets one such man who sees a ghost but to H.F. it is clear that the man is mad (22). There is a continuous rhetoric for prudence inherent in this catalogue, when H.F. warns against the books and almanacs that again fostered the belief in signs and portents such as apparitions and comets. In this

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context (JP, 20-25), H. F. becomes aware of the effects of fear and terror on the imagination. If truth and knowledge are social in the sense that we have to rely on others for knowledge of things we cannot experience ourselves, truth is also social in the sense that it needs to be shared and controlled. In this instance, a strong emotional response is a liability to the community’s judgment. The imagination is necessary in our conception of truth, because it allows us to reconstruct in our minds a complete or coherent picture of events, but the imagination is at the same time the place in the mind which is most vulnerable to fear and misinformation. The belief in supernatural guidance provides a continuity of experience, as H.F. is confronted with emotional and intellectual confusion. In addition, the constant show of H.F. in situations where he is willing to follow personal revelations effectively undermines the materialist aspects of the narrative. In RC, Robinson notes the “strange concurrence of days, in the various Providences which befell me; and which, if I had been superstitiously inclin’d to observe days as fatal or unfortunate, I might have had reason to have look’d upon with a great deal of curiosity” (106). Robinson stresses his orthodoxy here when he says “if” he had been “superstitious”, and if he had believed that certain days may bring ill luck, he would have noted. Ironically, he has in fact taken note of the “strange concurrence” even as he denies his belief in it. He then deflects from his slip by distancing himself with the word “curiosity” which turns him into a gentleman scholar who is only looking and observing. However, other than in RC, where the father’s prophetic words are probable predictions of the likely results of Robinson’s rashness of character, H.F.’s method of divination to overcome his moment of indecision does not have any footing in probability. Undoubtedly, it is a method of establishing emotional security; and it cures H.F. of his anxieties. One might argue that Defoe uses a magic of numbers to discover patterns, which is transferred into the realm of Providence and thus removed from superstition. According to the supernaturalist logic, such a magic of patterns would have to be accepted as part of the religious, without actually violating a religious identity as conceptualised in the beginning of this chapter.

4.4 T RANSFORMATIONS OF THE D EMONIC : T HE C ASE R OXANA ; OR T HE F ORTUNATE M ISTRESS

OF

In Roxana, demonic figures abound. Roxana calls herself a devil, she calls her enemies devils, and she describes her intuitions and actions as devilish. Even

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Amy, her maid and companion, seems demonic to her at times.3 Such language clearly describes the protagonist’s self-image and is thus a way to speak of her emotional life. These metaphors are contrasted by the description of physiological symptoms of feeling, which are as conspicuous. Roxana speaks of “the Effect of a violent Fermentation in [her] blood” (279); she tells us “[she] was in a kind of stupidity, I know not well what to call it” (167). In yet other places, she calls herself “surpriz’d” and “mute, as one Thunder-struck” (135). These straightforward descriptions of emotions picture Roxana as overwhelmed and without speech. In Roxana’s world, she is apt to be fully in charge in the contained and defined spaces of her own construction, but reacts with confusion and instability to events she cannot anticipate. As can be seen here, she lacks the words to explain her emotions, but then balances her speechlessness with the reference to the demonic. Indeed, her speechlessness reflects her moral emptiness, that is, her apparent lack of sympathetic sentiment. Yet, the narrator is preoccupied with the physiological effects of feeling and their cognitive implication which is to deprive her of her ability to act. If at first Roxana speaks of the “devil of poverty” to give an explanation of her adulterous life-style (72), at the end, she uses this language to describe her state of mind: I grew sad, heavy, pensive, and melancholy; slept little, and eat little; dream’d continually of the most frightful and terrible things imaginable: Nothing but Apparitions of Devils and Monsters; falling into Gulphs, and off from steep and high Precipices, and the like; so that in the Morning, when I shou’d rise, and be refresh’d with the Blessing of Rest, I was Hagridden with Frights, and terrible things, form’d merely in the Imagination; and was either tir’d, and wanted sleep, or over-run with Vapours. (310)

Her breakdown in this moment is filled with demonic images, presumably an expression of her guilt and shame. Moreover, “devils”, “monsters” and “apparitions”, “gulphs” and “precipices” are collocated with expressions of fear, such as “frightful”, “terrible”, “falling off”, frights”. She is “hagridden”, taken literally, she is “ridden by a hag” which is of course another word for witch. If the case should be made for Roxana’s “melancholy” state of mind, i.e. her 3

Cf. Terry Castle, “‘Amy, who Knew my Disease’: A Psychosexual Patter in Defoe’s Roxana”, The Female Thermometer 1995: 44-55. Castle argues that Amy becomes Roxana’s Other, taking over agency from the protagonist. As Castle admits, her reading of Roxana “debilitates” a more “conventional” reading of the novel (55). In this section, however, we will look at the narrative voice of Roxana and discuss how the narrator expresses dissonance.

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depression, one has to take into account that she styles herself as the passive participant in her own schemes. Furthermore, she continually externalises her emotions and the blame for her actions. Indeed, whenever she is “stunned” as she calls it, it is because she was surprised by an event that she could not anticipate and hence not control. For the time being, it is worth noting that Roxana develops a psychological dimension of the protagonist’s life-story. In addition, by talking of folly, blindness, imagination and self-deceit, Roxana creates the impression that she is delivered to forces influencing her from the outside. In the pivotal scene when Amy and Roxana are caught in a storm at sea, Roxana tells us that “under these dreadful Apprehensions, I look’d back on the Life I had led, with the utmost Contempt and Abhorrence; I blush’d, and wonder’d at myself, how I cou’d act thus” (165). In this moment, Roxana gives voice to her sense of dissonance in her decisions. Other than Robinson and H.F., Roxana’s emotional life does not revolve around an initial conflict that foreshadows events and prefigures future choices of the entire plot. Instead, Roxana’s decisions in life concern a repetition of similar situations, as for instance when she picks a new lover. Still, the reference to the demonic allows the narrator to create order of sorts. On the surface of her tale, the narrator gives her account an obvious order. Her various relationships provide the sequence of events. Each section of her narrative is built around a significant other, be that her first husband, her lovers, the Dutch merchant, or indeed Amy. But at the core of each section are Roxana’s conversations, which she transcribes with careful detail. In the following episode, Roxana having just rejected the Dutch merchant, who has been instrumental to her before, proposes that they be together without marrying. The narrator describes his reaction: “This amaz’d him, and he told me, I was pleas’d to be mysterious; but, that he was sure it was in no-body’s Power to hinder him going, if he resolv’d upon it, except me” (195). Not only is there a collocation of “amazed” and “mysterious”, which is close to the language of spiritual experience, but it is immediately followed by the ideas of control and foresight. Then, she receives a letter from him. He […] went away early in the Morning, leaving me a Letter [….] he foretold some fatal things, which, he said, he was well assur’d I shou’d fall into; and that, at last I wou’d be ruin’d by a bad Husband; bid me be the more wary, that I might render him a False Prophet; but to remember, that if ever I came into Distress, I had a fast-Friend at Paris, who wou’d not upbraid me with the unkind things past, but wou’d be always ready to return me Good for Evil. (ibid.)

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The plot is a repetition of the conflict in Robinson Crusoe. Noticeably, Roxana does not really disclose the “fatal things” that the merchant foretells, but even more importantly, she dismisses the idea that he might be able to foretell her future. This Letter stunn’d me; I cou’d not think it possible for any-one, that had not dealt with the Devil, to write such a Letter; for he spoke of some particular things which afterwards were to befal me, with such Assurance, that it frighted me before-hand; and when those things did come to pass, I was perswaded he had some more than humane Knowledge; in a word, his Advices to me to repent, were very affectionate. (ibid.)

Being given to the idea that he must be supernaturally gifted, she is blind to the probability of what might happen. “tho’ I did not at first set much by that Part, because I look’d upon them as what might not happen, and as what was improbable to happen at that time” (ibid.). Roxana concludes her observations with what might be called famous last words: “and I am a Memorial to all that shall read my Story; a standing Monument of the Madness and Distraction which Pride and Infatuations from Hell run us into; how ill our Passions guide us; and how dangerously we act, when we follow the Dictates of an ambitious Mind” (Rox, 200-01). Her comment is also an interpretation of her own reaction. She concedes that she should have thought about the probability of his predictions and she describes herself as mad and distracted with pride, all of which is a metaphorical description. Thus, she finds back to her rational voice. But other than in Robinson or in Journal the supernatural component is not transformed to describe a prudent strategy of thinking. Instead, while metaphorical, the demonic retains its inherent instability. If, arguably, the demonic provides Roxana with a sense of coherence, its ordering effect must lie in its continual presence. Again, it is worthwhile to return to the Paris episode during which Roxana hallucinates about her lover’s death. Roxana does not disqualify an irrational experience by the fact that she is dreaming or that there is a rational or conceivable explanation. To briefly recapitulate, Roxana “told him, [she] did not know what might be the reason, but that [she] had a strange Terror upon [her] Mind, about his going, and that, if he did go, [she] was perswaded some Harm wou’d attend him” (Rox, 52). The merchant does not take Roxana’s apprehensions seriously, but tries to calm her by leaving his valuables behind. The episode does not end at this point. She does not know how to convince him to stay and does not dare tell him about her premonition. In his eyes, this would have been mere superstition, or worse, he would have thought her hysterical. It is interesting that within a sentence of her account of her vision just cited, she says

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that she fears he might think it “her vapourish Fancy” (Rox, 88). She is afraid that he might think her hypersensitive, or “vapourish”. In other words, in her opinion a nervous weak mind is not “proper” to her image (ibid.). Characteristically, Roxana tries to analyse her experience. She does so by calling to mind once more what she saw at that moment. It is conspicuous that she gives this precise detailed version of her vision in hindsight and not when she is engaged in rendering the actual moment when it took place. … the Manner of his Death was terrible and frightful to me, and above all, the strange Notices I had of it; I had never pretended to the Second-Sight, or any thing of that Kind; but certainly, if any one ever had such a thing, I had it at this time; for I saw him as plainly in all those terrible Shapes as above, First, as a Skeleton, not Dead only, but rotten and wasted; Secondly, as kill’d, and his Face bloody; and Thirdly, his Cloaths bloody; and all within the Space of one Minute, or indeed, of a very few Moments. (Rox, 90)

Roxana does not conclude that she may be crazed or hallucinating or deranged, although she describes herself in these terms in other places. Obviously, Roxana does not consider the possibility that she might have been hallucinating, because her premonition is confirmed by the robbery and murder. As Roxana puts it, “(she) had never pretended to the Second-Sight” (Rox, 90). In this preternatural encounter, Roxana is confronted with something genuinely inexplicable. Her reaction she tells the reader is that she was “amazed” and “stupid” with the experience. Her wonder makes her speechless; the same speechlessness will hit her again when confronted with another unexpected event later on in the novel when she is reunited with the Dutch merchant. Baine suggests that at the time Defoe wrote about the demoniac or the devil, the devil’s influence was thought to work in dreams, evil impulses and by the passions (cf. Robinson Crusoe’s Vision of the Angelick World, 41). Defoe writes in The History of the Devil that he thinks it likely that the devil is capable of waking “dormant thoughts” which the victim then lives through in his or her dreams (137f.). Dreams, impulses and passions might be called the “media” of temptation (Baine 45). Defoe also seems to have believed that there are benevolent spirits taking an interest in human beings and their lives, communicating with them by dreams or by inspiring them with “strong impulses” (cf. Robinson Crusoe’s Vision of the Angelick World, 52ff.). Defoe ridicules the picture of the devil as cloven-footed and ugly and rejects the notion of a physical presence of the devil. Despite his apparent belief in spirits, Defoe’s scepticism might be described as saying that since he cannot refute the existence of spirits, angels and demons, he has to concede the

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possibility that they exist. On the other hand, it can be proven that such influences are not always at work where ignorance will see them. In The History of the Devil, Defoe makes it a running joke to point out in which political decisions of the past 3000 years the devil probably participated. Furthermore, he states ironically that it is not very difficult for the devil to find human agents: … authors are much divided as to the manner how the Devil manages his proper instruments for mischief; for Satan has a great many agents in the dark, who neither have the Devil in them, nor are they much acquainted with him, and yet he serves himself of them; whether of their folly, or of that other frailty called wit, it is all one; he makes them do his work, when they think they are doing their own; nay so cunning is he in his guiding the weak part of the world, that even when they think they are serving God, they are doing nothing less or more than serving the Devil… (History of the Devil, 172, my emphases)

It is conspicuous that Defoe acknowledges the idea of evil in the human being, in nature and in the world, yet, at the same time, uses the satiric potential of such a presence in the world. By contrast, in Damrosch’s opinion, the satiric tone of The History of the Devil covers “deep anxiety about the power of a being” of superior capacities (161). He argues moreover that “this ominous figure is welcome, for he furnishes a comforting explanation of feelings which must otherwise be located in one’s self” (ibid.). From this point of view, it is reasonable to assume the role of the Devil as a scapegoat in Roxana. The references to the devil, to the “snares” and “instruments of the devil”, mark the narrator’s voice in Roxana. It is noteworthy that Roxana detects demoniac influences in hindsight. While she concedes that she acted consciously and intentionally, Roxana adds a further dimension to her actions by demonising them in hindsight. As Blewett points out, speaking about Defoe’s novels in general, the uncertainty of life is mirrored by “the metaphors for the ‘snares’ and ‘cheats’ of life” and “the constant reference to disguise and dissimulation” … (133). He suggests that the image of the “devil’s snare” underpins the “vocabulary of deception and hypocrisy” (Blewett 138). Towards the end of the novel, Roxana speaks of herself as “she-devil” (301), in order to indicate the enormity of her deceitfulness. Thus, the narrator plays on the associations of the devil with malefactor and deluder and identifies herself with him. Roxana and Amy both demonise what they consider harmful. As a thorough materialist, Amy considers poverty “the Devil’s Clutches” (Rox, 71). Roxana characterises Amy’s “rhetorick” (73) as ignorance, because Amy fails to see that the “Devil of Poverty and Distress” is not the real devil (72). She tells the reader that she should have known better than “to plunge (herself) into the Jaws of Hell,

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and into the Power of the real Devil, in Recompence for that Deliverance…” (ibid.). At this point, Roxana crosses the line from metaphorical language to religious reflections. However, Roxana typically contradicts herself by taking over Amy’s point, when she concludes that “Poverty was her Snare”. Thus, Amy’s reasoning gains the status of a diabolical influence. As Malinda Snow argues, “if deliberative arguments running counter to popular teaching are associated with the devil, those supporting such teaching are just as readily associated with Providence, as the voice of conscience” (528f.). It is interesting that Puritan writers externalized unwanted impulses and explained their presence as the instigations of the devil (Damrosch 160f.). Alternatively, embracing the sceptical attitude towards demoniac influences, Blewett argues that “the real devil’s snare for Roxana does not come from without; it is her mind, her ability to distinguish between right and wrong, that is ensnared” (139). By calling Amy a “Viper, and Engine of the Devil” (78), Roxana demonises her maid for what might be called her own fault. Thus, she uses the devil as an excuse. In addition, Roxana attributes a bewitching quality to those who seemingly have power over her. Thus, she demonises money. When she contemplates her relationship with the English lord, for instance, she fuses economic considerations with the diabolical attraction of money. She repeats her statement that poverty is like a devil, arguing that “the Devil, and that greater Devil of Poverty, prevail’d” (Rox, 243). Then, she describes her gentleman in terms that suggest that although he may be an instrument of the devil, the true devil’s agent is money: the Person [that is, the English lord] who laid Siege to me, did it in such an obliging, and I may almost say, irresistible Manner, all still manag’d by the Evil Spirit; for I must be allow’d to believe, that he has a Share in all such things, if not the whole Management of them … These Circumstances, I say, the Devil manag’d , not only to bring me to comply, but he continued them as Arguments to fortifie my Mind against all Reflection, and to keep me in that horrid Course … as if it were honest and lawful. (Rox, 243, my emphases)

The “irresistible Manner” Roxana refers to, is her pay as a prostitute. At this point of her story, Roxana is incredibly wealthy and has to face the question, why she still acts like a “whore”. She points to the devil, considering herself his victim, but then admits that “this was a Pretence” (ibid.), externalising the feelings of responsibility and blame. After having invoked the devil as a presence in her life, she uncovers the alleged demoniac influence as the strong imagery of the guilty mind that it really is. Paradoxically, Roxana only hands herself over to the devil, when she takes up a sceptical view of her own language

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and thus creates an ironic distance to herself. Still, the use of “demonising” imagery reveals the narrator’s mental state and shows that she is struggling with fear. Roxana leads a double life. To be able to control information and even to manipulate it is at the core of her way of life. Having created a controlled domestic environment, she does not allow any disturbance to disrupt her life. As Novak says, “for all her fears and desires she is never carried away by her passions to the extent that she will express her folly in action” (1963: 150). Obviously, it is not necessary for Roxana to expose herself, as Amy is her executor. Backscheider argues that “Defoe’s Roxana lives in a world that is both claustrophobic and paranoid. …(1997: 243). As a woman of pleasure, exposure would be Roxana’s ruin. Fully aware of this fact – and apprehensive in her awareness – Roxana resorts to the strategy to confine herself (for instance, in Paris, Rox, 102, when her new lover, a prince, must not be seen). Her arrangements are calculated, rational and fully consistent with the reality of being a mistress of a famous man. There is therefore nothing paranoid about them. However, Roxana tends to react with suspicion to unknown persons whom she does not trust. Still, her distrust does not mark her as paranoid, as long as there is indeed reason for her to ensure her safety at all costs. Roxana’s language draws on the dark imagery of devilish character and underpins the relevance of fear as a motivation. Although there is no supernatural diabolical presence in the text, Roxana claims to be manipulated, bewitched and possessed. Likewise, she demonises her enemies, her seducers and, more generally, any bad influence on her. Thus, Roxana employs metaphors of demoniac influences in order to diminish her responsibility and blame the causes of her misconduct on a source outside her own self. Madness, on the other hand, introduces a complex field of possible interpretations. Certainly, the reference to the demonic enables Roxana to soften the dissonance she feels looking back on her decisions. Moreover, it gives Roxana’s bias of hindsight a most uneasy disquieting form. Merging madness with the supernatural, Roxana’s premonition gives the narrative a gothic touch. Yet, it also shows that Roxana is given to absurdity and superstition. Not only is Roxana’s reason misguided, but – as a consequence – her beliefs are aberrant. It is fascinating to explore terror, delusion and demoniac influence, because they underline the satiric quality of Roxana. Moreover, the dark language of Roxana seems to suggest that the lacking closure is meant as a warning, not as an invitation to scepticism. Defoe’s texts on the supernatural suggest that although one should follow a justified doubt and search for a natural cause of an apparently supernatural event, one should also admit that there may

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be things beyond the grasp of reason. Paradoxically, Roxana is the heroine most free in her ideas of choice, but she is caught in her own fate like no other of Defoe’s heroes. Placing the weight of responsibility with the devil, she suppresses her ability to anticipate the consequences of her decisions.

4.5 S UMMARY Defoe’s novels share a common question. His protagonist-narrators are always confronted with the disparity between their better knowledge and judgment of a situation and the actual course of action they choose to take. We could describe them as enacting a moral theory of action. The question however is why decisions are taken that so often run counter to better insight. Defoe gives us an Augustinian view of the problem: Despite our better judgment we are governed by our desires. Similarly, John Locke states that our determination and will to act depend on our desire and not on our assessment of a situation (1994: 191f.). In contrast to Locke’s view of decision taking, Defoe also dramatizes a Providential understanding of the order of things, in which each decision is meaningful spiritually. Both the religious and the rational views are given room. Such ambivalence is noteworthy in itself, even if, from the viewpoint of supernaturalism, it is doubtful that a real opposition between the two paradigms is intended. Yet, when looking at the transformations in the representation of the supernatural with the question of the form of decision-taking in mind, one can see that the supernatural gains a performative function in structuring the narratives into a dialogic exchange between subject and transcendental. Rather than emphasizing instances of supernatural phenomena – even if there are some few – the narration stresses the significance of spiritual insight to acquire knowledge and to alleviate the existential uncertainty of the protagonists. Prophecy and prediction may retain their religious context, yet, they are the means by which the protagonists question their own judgment. The supernatural is thus transformed to provide the referential pattern of decision taking. Its representation can therefore be understood in terms of a psychology of character. Thus, it can be viewed not so much as affirmation of certain religious views – which are by no means denied – but as an extension of the idea that knowledge is interactive. The dialogue between narrative voice and prophetic voice dramatizes the subjectivity of conflict and judgment and heightens the sense of anxiety in the narrative voice.

Part III: Singular Experience and Collective Knowledge [An] error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end up in doubt; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. BACON, THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, BOOK ONE, P. 147

5 Frames of Knowledge in Daniel Defoe’s Story-Telling The just Application of every Incident, the religious and useful Inferences drawn from every Part, are so many Testimonies to the good Design of making it publick, and must legitimate all the Part that may be called Invention, or Parable. DANIEL DEFOE, FROM “THE PREFACE” OF THE FARTHER ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, 1719: [A3]

5.1 I NTRODUCTION Jean le Rond d’Alembert notes that “men seldom acquire new knowledge without losing some pleasing illusion; so that our enlightenment takes place at the expense of our pleasures” (quoted in Maguire 2006: 51). Undoubtedly, d’Alembert’s description of “pleasing” illusions as pleasures suggests an aesthetic experience of the subject that is arguably foreign to Defoe’s work. Still, Defoe repeatedly nudges his reader to stumble over the question of what it means to acquire new knowledge, and what is entailed by erroneous opinions. The mark of Enlightenment thinking in Defoe is that he is prepared to try literally to expand the boundaries of our knowledge, while remaining true to the idea of deliberating that knowledge and testing the evidence it is based on. Memorably, Francis Bacon comments on the strategies of deliberation in the form of a short parable (see introductory quotation of part III). The theme of the moral tale is that one must not rush to conclusions. Bacon compares contemplation, here another word for deliberation, to a road one must choose to travel. As in the fairytale, the easy road is not the right way to reach one’s destination. Bacon’s parable teaches the lesson that “so it is in contemplation; if

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a man will begin with certainties, he shall end up in doubt; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties (Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book One, 147). Bacon advises the reader to welcome doubt in order to arrive at certainty. However, Bacon’s point is not so much whether or not one should doubt, but to call to mind what one requires to make deliberation impervious to error: “error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment” (ibid.). To precipitate one’s thinking leads to error. Not to rush to conclusions is a virtue. To begin with doubts is to consider options. Defoe’s novels live on the strange experience of the individual. They tell particular life stories, epitomizing the subjective nature of perception. These stories revolve around moments of action and change. Deliberation is a question of weighing probabilities; it is anticipation. It is furthermore the contemplation of the evidence at hand. Defoe is apt to bring together different types of evidence. If a story serves as evidence, which is the case for all types of testimony, Defoe never dismisses the significance of its being narrated. The narrative frame setting itself has relevance to the meaning and validity of the story. That knowledge should depend on the collection and interpretation of evidence, firmly roots Defoe’s work in early Enlightenment thinking. Particularly, he is indebted to Bacon, as Ilse Vickers demonstrates in Defoe and the New Sciences. Thus, Bacon states that “[n]either [is he] of the opinion, in this History of Marvels, that superstitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, dreams, divinations, and the like, where there is an assurance and clear evidence of the fact, be altogether excluded”. Bacon’s interest is strictly that of the scientist and he advises that where “prodigies” and “miracles” are concerned to acknowledge that they are “either not true or not natural” and therefore should not be part of the “story of nature” (Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book Two, p. 177). But Defoe is also familiar with the philosophical currents of his time, as Max Novak shows in his Defoe and the Nature of Man.1 Certainly, his work on the supernatural should alert his reader that Defoe remained engaged with issues of knowledge, evidence, and certainty when he was producing his novels like Roxana and Robinson Crusoe and fictionalised works such as A 1

Novak’s Defoe and the Nature of Man (1963) discusses Defoe’s work in regard to theories of the law of nature. While he covers a wide range of sources, Novak’s contextualising Defoe with Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf surely opens the debate of the problem of necessity in Defoe’s work. As Novak is also interested in analysing Defoe’s character psychology, his book is relevant to this study. However, different from Novak’s argument, the focus of this study is on the social psychology of the narrative form of the parable, and on the frame of mind of deliberation.

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Journal of the Plague Year. In this chapter, the leading question will be what is entailed by the process of narration in terms of the phenomenology and psychology of “knowing” about the unknowable. First of all, it is worthwhile to consider the symbolic power of the concept of knowledge in Defoe’s work – in particular in A System of Magic – and to contextualise his approach by looking at the concept “knowledge” itself. Moreover, the idea of having a story as the main vessel of the promotion of knowledge deserves a more detailed consideration of form. Secondly, reading A Journal of the Plague Year alongside An Essay on the History of Apparitions one can see how Defoe makes use of his parabolic story, establishing a dialogue between spectator and witness, between observer and subject. Erving Goffman’s frame analysis will be useful to study the dialogic nature of Defoe’s use of episodic narration. The experimental sciences gave Defoe the idea to put facts and objects into his fictions. In addition, they gave him the idea of exploring the relationships between evidence of different kinds, and between the parties passing on new insights. If Defoe’s aim ultimately must always be to focus on the integrity of meaning, he continues to draw attention to the potential instability of communication on the more intellectual level of interpretation and deliberation, too, in addition to the more intuitive aspects of delusion and fiction, which has been discussed previously. The social interaction which is so basic to “being in the know” in A Journal of the Plague Year is contrasted by the sheer confidence in the inventiveness of the individual in Robinson Crusoe. Surely, however, even if knowledge is defined as being able to acquire a set of skills and even if one can learn these skills by trial and error, to be able to share what one has found remains part of the endeavour. Still, if knowledge is unstable, it is because of the challenges of communication, which receives a comical treatment in RC, when Robinson begins to interact with his animals. When turning to Roxana, one finds a character completely capable of taking advantage of any misfirings of communication, taking content away from evident fact to a mirror world. In all the works discussed here, Defoe returns to the idea of knowledge that combines three aspects. Firstly, the epistemological concern lies with the self’s abilities to interpret and deliberate experience and evidence. Furthermore, knowledge requires communication. However, the dialogic interaction between partners sharing information is not without problems. As soon as the interpersonal relationship is part of the process, the exchange may be jeopardized by misinformation, deception or misunderstandings. Bacon called error “an impatience of doubt”. In the world of Defoe’s fictions, error as a result of hastiness roots in the communicative situation that is vulnerable to manipulation.

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Lastly, Defoe’s idea of knowledge comprises the material itself, that is, the content. Thus, in his work, Defoe moves from looking at human understanding functioning in the dialogic interaction between subjects, to studying the vulnerability of such a communicative situation.

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In A Political History of the Devil, the devil figures as the trickster seducing the naïve into false beliefs. Similarly, A System of Magick discusses the natural and supernatural skills needed to pass for a magician, and debates the possible involvement of the Devil. Essentially, the tract is a motley satire on the idea of having a group of people in charge of truth. While possibly his most provocative attack on institutional religion, A System of Magick is also an attempt to develop an anthropological history of the figure of the wise man. Defoe begins his treatise with the etymology of the word “magic”. He observes that “the People who studied or profess’d that which we now call Magick, were quite another sort of Folk, than those worthy Gentlemen who now apply themselves to that Profession” (29). He explains that what used to be called “magic” provided the means to describe the phenomena of the earth and could be described as “science”: “a Magician was no more or less in the ancient Chaldean Times, than a Mathematician, a Man of Science, who stor’d with Knowledge and Learning, as Learning went in those Days, was a kind of walking Dictionary to other People” (29). These “magicians” would be asked for advice on difficult situations and decisions. Defoe thus provides us with a definition of “magic” that is obviously very distant from the popular figure of the wizard or the witch. Still, A System of Magick is mainly devoted to this latter figure: it discusses magic as the “black art” of obtaining demonic powers to execute sinister designs. As such, it might be read as a collection of entertaining stories. Yet, when Defoe announces that he wants to study the gradual change of the figure of the magician, he emphasizes the historical process, in which [t]he Magicians being a Race of honest studious Men, searching after Wisdom, and blest with greater Shares of it, then the ordinary Race of Men were arriv’d to; we must look farther, and come down lower into Time, for the present vulgar Acceptation of the Word. … we must a little enquire into the Gradations of the Change … from meer Philosophy, to all the Extraordinaries of Mystery, Cunning, Trick, Cheat, Star-gazing, Fortune-telling, Conjuring, Witchcraft, and the Devil. (52)

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Defoe exploits the juxtaposition between the Chaldean sage and the modern witch to remind his reader constantly of the contrast between the good use and the abuse of superior understanding. Moreover, he also links the ancient magician to the figure of the prophet. According to Defoe, one has to acknowledge that these men of knowledge were approached to interpret “any Omens, ill Signs and Tokens, Dreams, or other strange things happen’d in those Times” (29). While the “walking dictionaries” are called upon for knowledge, they are also thought to provide interpretations of supernatural phenomena. The “magicians” of old “searched into the Arcana of Nature, and were Masters of perhaps a little experimental Philosophy” (30). While Defoe thus establishes the role of the ancient “magi” as prophets and seers, he recognizes the proximity between knowledge and foresight. Understanding a particular phenomenon allows one to anticipate what will happen. In this sense, the magicians of old were prophets; and in this sense, they were scientists (cf. SM, 32). Defoe continues his critique of language in his discussion of magic. Linguistic representation and furthermore linguistic performance are key to the practice of magic. Defoe seems to make a rather complex argument for the inexistence of magic by drawing attention to the emptiness of linguistic performance on the grounds of the complete arbitrariness of a word like “abracadabra”. The magic of this word lies in its symmetry. Defoe asserts that if there is magic it is due to the gods’ implicit understanding of what the person meant, rather than because of the signification of a word (SM, 126-7). To Defoe, the effects produced by magical words, as for example a cure of an ill person, should be ascribed to divine benevolence and not to any magic power. Magic thus becomes a form of prayer. Apart from Joseph in Egypt, the story of Daniel in Babylon advising Nebuchadnezzar and interpreting the “mene tekel” appearing to Belshazzar stands out. One cannot easily forget Nebuchadnezzar’s spell of madness which surely makes the Babylonian king an early type of the madman running wild one remembers Robinson running around wildly on the beach of his island. Then, one cannot but be impressed with the legendary Daniel predicting the fall of an empire. Clearly, the stories of the Hebrews’ Babylonian exile provide a rich source of plots and images. Babylon is the mythical place where language and knowledge were confused as God’s punishment. Not only in A System of Magick is it a place where the boundaries of knowledge are tested, Defoe also devotes an early poem to the story of the Tower of Babel. In his fascinating study Fallen Languages: Crises of Representation in Newtonian England, 1660-1740, Robert Markley investi-

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gates the relationship between theology and the Royal Society, discussing primarily Robert Boyle’s physico-theology, Isaac Newton’s natural philosophy, and language and representation. Markley points out that “for Boyle, Newton, and their contemporaries, Babel is a historical fact, not a parable or myth” (69). To “reverse Babel”, to reconstruct unity and order out of noise and confusion, is an image of the “ideological appeal of universal language schemes” in which seventeenth-century language reformers sought to support the “ideology of restoration, the metaphysics of a providential order” (72). But Babel also serves as an image to describe the efforts to overcome the damaging effects of linguistic and representational confusion, and to envisage an “endless progress in knowledge” (93). Apart from Robert Boyle, John Wilkins was the “paradigmatic” figure of these efforts (ibid.).2 Any mention of Babel, then, should be taken seriously as a historical reference even if the symbolic dimension is immediately obvious to the modern reader. Questions of knowledge and questions of identity are intimately linked. In Defoe’s historical imagination one myth not only repeatedly gains prominence in his texts but also becomes an aetiological myth centring on loss and obligation resulting from this loss: the story of the Tower of Babel, rendered in the Old Testament. Looking at Defoe’s version of the story it is evident that it functions as an alternate history in which the several notions of origin, identity, loss of innocence, and the human condition merge. Thus, in 1692, Defoe devotes a verse satire in couplet (in the style of John Dryden) to the Athenian Society, in which he phrases the following lines: Thus when our Fathers (touch’d with Guilt) That huge stupendious Stair-case built, We mock indeed the fruitless Enterprize, Succesless Actions never pass for Wise: But was the Dreadful Pile in being, ’twould show To what degree that untaught Age did know, Who Nature’s Poize unequally divide,

2

John Wilkins was a founding member of the Royal Society, and published The discovery of a new world, or, A discourse tending to prove, that ('tis probable) there may be another habitable world in the moon in 1638. Defoe is clearly influenced by Wilkins when he takes up the idea of going to exotic places to acquire new knowledge in The Consolidator (1705), where the narrator travels to China and finally to the moon.

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And turn’d the Globe into a Pyramide, While Heaven seem’d more to apprehend it, than deride.3

The story of Babel is a story of pride and presumption and final punishment. In Defoe’s poem, this second fall is preceded by a Golden Age of long life, in which knowledge and memory defeat ignorance and forgetfulness. Moreover, the story of the tower of Babel suggests that it is an act of rebellion against divine order, i.e. the building of the tower, that leads to the punishment. Yet, it is important to note that while the reason for this act of defiance remains un-stated in the poem, it makes a point of attributing the moral qualities of good and bad to wisdom and learning, the “youths of Angelic Birth”, on the one hand, and ignorance, the “tyrant” and “usurper”, on the other hand. Humankind is punished by dispersal and linguistic confusion: Strange uncouth Dialects from Heaven succeed, And Universal Clouds of Jargon spread: Confusions here in horrid Squadrons joyn; And here King Ignorance began his Reign; Old Knowledge hither bore Imperial Sway, But found a strange, a sensible Decay

In the third and final verse paragraph of the poem, Defoe develops a sort of historiography of knowledge, putting Rome and Greece as allegorically representing scientific progress and recovery from this fall into ignorance. Obviously emulating John Dryden’s “MacFlecknoe” in structure and imagery, Defoe also enacts the Baconian motto “knowledge is power”, so that he can not only raise the question of the origin of knowledge but he can moreover posit knowledge is the true source of power in defiance of other theories of power. The appeal of the story of Babel is that it allows Defoe to play on two contrasting elements. If the story functions as a version of the Fall from Paradise, it effectually inverts the story by describing a loss of knowledge rather than a gain of knowledge. Instead of bemoaning the loss of innocence it focuses on the fall into ignorance. It thus shifts our attention from an understanding of the human state as sinful, to an understanding of the human state as suffering from fundamental defects. Crucially, then, evil originates in what we lack. Yet, the Babel story also becomes a myth of origin for our search for knowledge and improvement. Not only that but whereas an act of rebellion was a defiance of the heavens before, it is now a necessary action and indeed a moral duty. Thus, the 3

Defoe, Daniel. “To the Athenian Society”. ESTC N0161102

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mythical content consists of the inversion of the original fall, which serves to explain the basic human need to acquire knowledge, while it retains the idea of divine punishment of human pride present in the biblical story. Effectively, Defoe historicizes a mythological and theologically endowed understanding of human origins in order to describe the self. In A System of Magick, Defoe revisits the story of Babel as an episode in the history of mankind which mankind does not want to remember: “as no Man loves to see himself a Fool, and if he has done a foolish thing, does not care to have the Remembrance of it always in his View” (40). The System undertakes to historicize human understanding and knowledge. As the poem it goes back to Babel. If the story of Babel has become something of the myth of origin for our quest for knowledge it also seems to come to symbolize the search for origins itself. When we might expect A System of Magick to be a history of the origins of religion and magic, we find it to be a history of knowledge. Studiously avoiding attributing religious status to the magicians of old, Defoe solves the problem by giving them the status of scholars. Lastly, the history of knowledge melts into a history of religion because the acquisition of knowledge turned out to be necessary for religion. While the argument underlying this last point needs further analysis, one can say that Defoe pushes the point that there is a necessary development in human history, by which he not only returns to the notion of Providential order but also postulates the potentials of human nature, so that his account oscillates between a religiously defined determinism and a historically determined identity of man as a developing entity.

5.3 D IALOGIC S TORIES If the Tower of Babel is a historical story, it allows Defoe and his contemporaries to conjure up the historical meta-narrative of progress in visual terms (cf. Markley,63-94). Story-telling is essential to this quest for knowledge. But one has to wonder about the ramifications of Defoe’s way of circumnavigating different definitions of knowledge and belief. By further contextualising Defoe’s narrative employment of the framed story, one can see that Defoe’s art of deliberation mirrors the concerns of his contemporary philosophers and scientists. The framed story requires the reader to endure all stages of doubt and instability, to arrive at moral certainty, which is arguably the purpose of employing this form in the first place. When one considers Defoe’s intellectual home, it is clear that he is indebted to Bacon. Ilse Vickers’ study Defoe and the New Sciences investigates Defoe’s

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relationship to Bacon and the Royal Society. She points out that Defoe never systematically organised his views, and never showed any interest in a philosophy, which would present universal laws and rules (1996: 16). But he absorbs Bacon’s belief that experimental scientific achievements, while separate from theology, will lead to progress. Indeed, it will enable humanity to recover some of the prelapsarian innocence and control of nature (cf. Vickers 14). One notes that supernaturalism defends the same tenet, if in a more extreme form. But it is helpful to consider the concepts of knowledge and evidence from the scientific viewpoint rather than with supernaturalism in mind. Experiment and observation, two Baconian strategies of gaining knowledge, figure significantly in Defoe’s fictions, in Robinson Crusoe especially. Like no other of Defoe’s characters, Robinson functions by listing items, collecting facts, and learning by experiment. As Vickers notes, “Crusoe works not just as a scientist but as a Christian, sharing the belief of many seventeenth-century scientists that the study of the created world would give insight into the divine order” (4). Defoe’s pragmatic view of science explains the topics he chooses for publication. He writes histories; that is, collections of facts, rather than a philosophy, which would be a system of thought. As Vickers claims Defoe “dedicates himself to one of Bacon’s main themes, the production and promotion of knowledge useful to society at large” (16). With the exception of A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe’s narratives are often “strange” adventures, extraordinary affairs and singular memoirs. He stresses the extraordinary nature of the experiences of his protagonist. When turning to David Hume, we see that he criticizes the imagination for its extraordinary nature, and separates reason or judgment from imagination. Everyday experience rather than obscure events are the subject of reason (cf. Maguire 58-9; Hume quoted in Maguire, 58). Maguire observes that “Hume obviously partakes in rather than begins a tendency to attribute general human exaltation and ‘distant and high enquiries’ to imagination, while marking the truly ‘natural’ as a space in firm alliance with the unimagined” (59). With Hume, the reader considers the abilities available to human beings. Given the emphases in RC on the natural abilities of man to acquire technical skills and knowledge, Defoe adopts a similar gist, but he seeks out the improbable and extraordinary for his demonstrations, so that one has to wonder what kind of knowledge is promoted in books such as Roxana, or Robinson Crusoe. Still, Defoe seems to have taken to heart Thomas Sprat’s view that one should investigate the individual case. As Shapiro points out, the experimental method embraced by the Royal Society in the seventeenth century seeks to examine the particular instances, the “particular subjects”. While ultimately the

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aim is to find the “universal philosophy” explaining the particular instances, the defenders of the experimental method, such as Thomas Sprat, thought it safer to consider what can be examined, that is, the particular subject (1983: 26). In terms of method, then, Defoe clearly brings together the world of fiction and science. Arguably, Defoe’s fictional work is more remarkable for representing problems of knowledge, rather than for its contribution to a store of knowledge, even if Defoe creates new archetypes in figures like Crusoe and Moll. On the other hand, he invites the reader to engage the imagination in possible worlds of experience. When the emphasis is on the strange, the story posits the imagination as a conduit to knowledge. It asks the reader to believe in the unlikely. Above all, it asks the reader to imagine that ordinary persons can deal with extraordinary events. Despite the improbability, for example, of Robinson’s finding an intact ship wrecked off his island, or of Roxana’s reunion with her merchant lover, or of Moll’s final good luck, Defoe is at pains to represent the strange events as ordinary experiences, in the sense that his narration invites the reader to see both the miraculous or extraordinary of an event, and to consider the more likely natural reason of the event in question. Defoe thus successfully adapts John Wilkins’ demand to be open and willing to “entertain superficially implausible knowledge-claims” (Shapin 1994: 199). In her book on the English fable, Jayne Lewis postulates that “the emergence of probabilist and materialist linguistic values accompanied a growing preoccupation with textual representation – with the history of writing, with the evils of print culture, with the phenomenology of reading” (1996: 7). As was argued above, Defoe recognized the potential of fiction despite his misgivings about “mere” invention. Defoe did not publish collections of fables as did contemporaries such as Aphra Behn who published Aesop’s Fables, with his Life in 1687 (Lewis 224); nor did he satirically use the form of the fable as did Bernard Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees, or Jonathan Swift in A Tale of a Tub (1704). However, he refers to his fictions as “fables” with the full implication of the word. A “fable” is conventionally an animal story – as were Aesop’s fables – but, as a term, it is “polyvalent”: it could mean simply a “lie”, or else a “plot, a hieroglyph, a parable, a myth” (Lewis, 10). Moreover, Defoe’s narratives are episodic in structure, integrating the narration of isolated events, situations or conversations into the overall narrative. One can arguably read these substories as fables embedded in an explanatory commentary. The phenomenology of reading fables requires a special engagement with the work. As Lewis argues, “its efflorescence is wonderfully constructive only as long as it is closely monitored, leashed to its roots in the sensible world” (7). Furthermore, Lewis observes that fables “allow readers to examine how

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meanings are constructed, and they seem to admit, indiscriminately, the arguments from opposing sides” (ibid.). Indeed, Lewis convincingly postulates that “the shift to sceptical, sensible, and text-centered linguistic practices after the English Civil War inevitably provoked a search for new metaphors, for more empirical and evidentiary figures of speech” (7). Fables lay claim on universal applicability. They are true of and for everybody regardless of profession or social origins. Moreover, fables reflect their use of language by drawing attention to their own artifice. However, as Lewis points out, such belief in materialist correspondence between object and representation was immediately deflated: fables harbor little reverence towards their own pretense that signs naturally point to a single meaning, that there can be pure bonds between words and things, that such bonds would be particularly equitable or reassuring if they did exist. Material signs ultimately commanded unanimous consent only when the way they became meaningful was made evident as well (Lewis, 7).

Max Novak argues, “for Defoe … words were merely the means of picturing the idea, the ‘Thing it self’, in the mind of his reader” (1963: 158). If only the picture were vivid enough, knowledge of the thing itself might be had. Novak describes Defoe’s commitment to realism and to didacticism, drawing attention to Defoe’s moral preoccupations (ibid.). The fable, then, becomes a picture of an idea; and in Defoe’s work it becomes a parable. Moreover, without fail, Defoe’s protagonists move within relative social isolation. They essentially navigate by themselves. This instance defines their sense of self and the subjectivity of their perception. However, the conversations and interactions of each protagonist take up a large part of the narrators’ focus. Indeed, dialogic exchange informs the scene. Even if one can only be sure about one’s own subjective experience, interaction is established as the way of finding certainty. Consequently, subjectivity is not a stable value. Its place needs to be determined depending the context of the situation, since subjectivity always implies the dialogic other. Knowledge is organized experience, one could argue with Erving Goffman (Frame Analysis). Only through interaction, in fact, can one determine the bias of one’s own views. As argued previously, observation, evidence, and testimony pose significant problems. However, Defoe does not so much speculate about empirical epistemology. Instead, he puts his concepts into practice. His evidence usually consists in witness statements presented as anecdotal exemplary fables. In the supernatural tracts, which after all take the literary form of satires, the witness

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statements are fictionalised into anecdotes and parabolic episodes. Characteristically, what one might call evidential stories are episodes that the narrator tells as a re-presentation, effectively combining observation and report. Given their literary form, these stories raise questions of credibility and reliability, when they occur in allegedly factual tracts. Once transferred into a fictitious setting, however, the encapsulated evidential fable draws attention to its own form, as was argued above. In Defoe’s fictions, observer and witness often engage in a dialogue, which in narrative terms is constructed like a dramatic scene. The protagonist asks characters questions, in order to gain insights into a situation. In order to call a narrative statement testimony, it should provide a valid source of facts. As Barbara Shapiro notes, “it was necessary to employ testimony, eliminating ’mere hearsay,’ fabulous traditions, and reports suspected of being fictitious, biased, or erroneous, without becoming so sceptical as to refuse to assent to all testimony” and “the best that could be done was to establish reasonable criteria on which to evaluate testimony” (21). On the one hand, the supernatural tracts by Defoe and others, do not break with “fabulous traditions” as clearly as is, according to Shapiro, stipulated. On the other hand, the reliance on isolated statements by single individuals makes the certainty of any insight gained from a witness questionable. Furthermore, Shapiro points out that one consequence of the scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century is that the once simple dichotomy between knowledge and opinion gave way to considerations of the differing varieties of knowledge and the kinds of certainty one might attribute to each. These refinements resulted in distinguishing logical and mathematical demonstration from moral certitude, a concept borrowed from theology. Moral certainty became the highest certainty available where facts and experience were concerned. Though assent was not compelled, under optimum conditions the ‘reasonable man’ might be certain of his experience (16).

As a speech act, the evidential story forces the reader, the narrator and the author to engage in a hermeneutic circle of understanding. The reader is invited to understand the single actions of the protagonists in reference to the general plot. Similarly, the narrators looking back onto their own lives come to understand their biography or their experience focussing on single particular events, which relate to their entire story. As writers, fictional as they are, the narrators exercise the same hermeneutic activity as the readers. The dialogic exchange between

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onlooker and the person who experiences a situation, then, forms the basic element of Defoe’s narratives. Knowledge acquisition, and by extension the affirmation of truth, is interactive. Defoe’s concept of knowledge, displayed in Journal of the Plague Year for example, is dialogic. This definition suggests that, as individual experience is singular in nature, experience can only be validated as a gain of knowledge in community. As Steven Shapin argues, knowledge production relies on community. Shapin’s claim helps to illuminate the significance of the tension in Defoe’s work between the representation of the individual both as a part of a community and as an isolated subject (cf. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, 1996). The tension is dramatic, because Defoe never represents the basic dialogic relationship between individual and community as simple or straightforward. On the contrary, it is always endangered. In Roxana, the heroine consciously plays with this instability when she emphasizes her own demonic qualities as trickster and fraud. The fundamental tension in the existence of the individual is what ultimately makes Defoe’s fictions timeless.

5.4 F ACT AND F ICTION : E MBEDDED S TORY -T ELLING A J OURNAL OF THE P LAGUE Y EAR

IN

In Defoe’s work, A Journal of the Plague Year occupies a pivotal place. Like no other of his works, the Journal encompasses Defoe’s imaginative concerns. Defoe offers a view of the world that addresses the uncertainties of human existence and endeavours to restore faith in the knowledge of the greater order to things. Similarly, John Richetti considers the Journal as the epitome of Defoe’s work and argues that it is crucial to understanding the significance of order in Defoe. As Richetti observes, the narrator, H.F., discovers a greater order after having witnessed the disorder in the time of the epidemic (1975: 238). Disorder provokes confusion. In other words, it is an intellectual, cognitive, challenge. The intellectual confusion is always accompanied by a similar emotional response, which one can define as fear. Certainly, the confusion experienced by the characters of the Journal mirrors the disorder in the world of the Journal. The representation of the uncertainty and disorder attendant to the plague epidemic in the Journal is not limited to the observation of nature or the religious implications of the experience of a fundamental uncertainty. Instead, Defoe succeeds in offering a multi-dimensional picture of the effects of the

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plague, which range from the personal thoughts of H.F. to the social and economic ramifications of the disease.4 That the disease first of all creates a situation of uncertainty, whether in regard to nature, which demonstrates its overwhelming force in the illness, or whether in regard to the socio-economic situation, and the religious interpretation of the plague, is shared by virtually all critics writing on the Journal. To name but a few, Louis Landa focuses on Defoe’s plague writing and the religious interpretation of the plague. Similarly, Everett Zimmerman offers an insightful reading of the role of providence in the Journal. Max Novak emphasizes the representation of the city itself, and approaches the book from a social point of view. Uncertainty is the point of departure in most readings; and virtually all critics seem to agree that A Journal of the Plague Year is Defoe’s most extraordinary and thought-provoking narrative. A Journal of the Plague Year is not a novel. It is a fiction of history, and, moreover, as some would argue, informed by the quest for knowledge. As J. Paul Hunter phrases it, the Journal “makes the question of the narrator’s knowledge the metaphor for [the] book’s central issue” (46). Hunter argues that the narrator’s reliability or unreliability, that is, his (or her) uncertainty and difficulty of judgment, is the expression of the epistemology underlying the novelistic form. Exactly because the narrative allows for the degree of introspection and discovery of the personal mind as it does, it poses the epistemological questions that, in a sense, by its very endeavour, it tries to answer. The narrative thus builds on three questions. The first is whether or not it is possible to render a complete report. Secondly, it asks whether or not every expression of a conscious state are truthful or valid. The third question is whether or not one can rely on one’s own perceptions and assessments. It follows that such an epistemology of the novel has consequences both for the narrator’s sense of identity and for the ethics forming the subtext of the novel.5 One of Defoe’s narrative innovations of A Journal of the Plague Year as a historical fiction was to supply statistical evidence to corroborate his story. The statistics are not attached but are included in the running text. Visually, they stand out noticeably. One example reads:

4

Likewise, Richetti suggests that the plague “is an extended moment of total uncertainty, an exaggerated, nearly metaphysical version provided by history of the random destructiveness of an environment. Perfectly, one can add, that environment is both natural and social” (234).

5

Cf. Charles Taylor; Michael McKeon; J. Paul Hunter; Paul Ricoeur.

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Dead of other Diseases besides the Plague. From the 18th

to the 25th July___________ 942 st

to the 1 August_________ 1004 to the 8th ______________1213 […]

H.F. then offers an interpretation of the table, which shows a general increase of deceased persons, allegedly by other diseases than the plague. He speculates that the families of the deceased asked that the cause of death be altered, so that they would not be subjected to the quarantine (JPY, 161). The statistics are, to speak with Erving Goffman “out of the frame”, but fulfil a function with regard to what occurs within frame (cf. 231ff.). The statistical data is not the only type of paratextual feature. H.F. quotes poetry (JPY, 23), and reproduces a bill of advertisement by a doctor (JPY, 30). Defoe also presents the reader with inscriptions and magical symbols. ABRACADABRA ABRACADABR ABRACADAB ABRACADA ABRACAD ABRACA ABRAC ABRA ABR AB A (JPY, 32)

Beside the “abracadabra”, H.F. cites other forms of protective symbols, the “I H S” arranged as a triangle, and a printer’s rose. The difference in nature between the statistical evidence and the magical symbols could not be more blatant. Clearly, the visual arrangement emphasizes the dialogic relation between these two paratextual elements. They appear to related to each other simply by virtue of their placement in regard to the running text. Indeed, the visual presentation suggests a progression from the quack doctor’s bill to the magical signs to the statistics and to the final paratextual edition that effectively ends the text. H.F.s final lines seem equally a triumphant exclamation and an epitaph on the city’s losses during the plague:

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A dreadful Plague in London was, In the Year Sixty Five Which swept an Hundred Thousand Souls Away; yet I alive! H.F.

After these lines there is an emblem which the editor describes as a phoenix (JPY, 193 n.3). The bird is perched on floral design that branches into two cornucopias to each side. As the editor notes, it is a symbol of the city’s rebirth, and a promise of prosperity and plenty. H.F.’s conclusion of the narrative is a mixture of expressing his gratitude at surviving the epidemic and a moral reprimand of the ungrateful behaviour of his fellow citizens. His ambivalence is mirrored in his “stanza” that he sets at the end. But furthermore, when one acknowledges the relationship between the visually prominent paratextual elements, one can see that H.F. actually replaces the magical symbol with the materialistic symbol of the phoenix. More daringly, one might argue that there is a logical progression from magical symbol to statistical evidence which leads to the exclamation at end. Strangely, the final symbol works much like the magical symbols and seems to work a magic of its own: it asserts the optimistic outlook on the future. Thus, H.F. does not dismiss symbolism. Indeed, there is a quasi magical quality to his symbol: it inscribes a state of affairs that has yet to come about and thus tries to influence events. The general tendency we can detect in H.F. as an observer and judge of tales is that he will trust the poor man more than others. What this seems to imply is that H.F. assumes not only that man has an inborn common sense helping him to function in this situation of severe crises, he also seems to think that the poor man, such as the water man, is more likely to do what his common sense tells him than are other people. Indeed, H.F. initially seems guilty of fatalism when deciding to remain in the city. Even if it should be true that his motivation is curiosity, the episode calls his judgement into doubt. However, what is questioned by H.F.’s fatalist decision is not his reliability as a narrator but his reliability as consistent thinker. Thus, by this initial conflict between the two brothers, Defoe takes away the comforting notion that there would be one system of thought apt to confront a crisis like the plague. Rather than giving us certainty, Defoe gives us an epistemological scepticism, not doubting the thing in itself, i.e. the truth of belief or the reality of the plague, but testing the coherence and clarity of the stories on which we tend to build our opinion. Making his narrator unreliable in this regard, he re-enforces the notion that

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questioning stories is necessary. This does not mean, though, that Defoe falls into a radical scepticism. The Journal of the Plague Year, which seems to be an obvious example of an attempt to come to terms with a natural disaster, or one could say, a natural evil, is not trying to “justify the ways of God to man”. If anything could shake the belief in nature’s order, the belief that nature is ordered for the best and obeying Providence, often called God’s government or administration, it would be a natural disaster of the extent of the plague of 1665. One remembers that the earthquake of Lisbon about a hundred years later forced thinkers and writers to question the notion that the cosmos is ordered for the best. Defoe can be seen as a Christian apologist, employing a common rhetorical strategy: by appropriating and including a contemporary understanding of disease and by stressing human capacity to find a way out of the crisis, he effectively incorporates all viewpoints that might have led to any form of scepticism towards divine order or religion. Still, the narrator does not indulge in moral observations and admonishing allegories, as plague and journal develop, which is one reason why the Journal of the Plague Year is such a poignant tale. H. F. is not trying to question God’s will, but then he does not set out to justify it and he does not seek the cause of the Plague with God. Rather, the Journal is a tale of acceptance. The city during the Plague becomes the site of human weakness, folly and chaos. But it is not necessarily a place without hope. The Journal seems to carry one general message, which might be rendered in the terms of the proverb “God (Heaven) helps them that help themselves”. Interestingly, this proverb is also known to refer to the industrious,6 explaining successful enterprises. H. F. is not a Job-like character. In the face of the epidemic, himself a man of faith and devotion, he tries to present a picture of the plague that focuses on the practical sides of life under such circumstances. It is possible to survive the epidemic, if precautions are taken. Thus, H. F. devotes long sections of the Journal to advise his readers on the measures that can be taken against the disease. Despite the evident straightforwardness of this message, I would argue that H. F.’s development from fatalist believer to near-scientific recorder of events is not only crucial to drive the message home, it also reflects a change of paradigms that can be traced in Defoe’s works. This change is underscored by the narrator’s references to more traditional and conventional patterns of explaining the disastrous epidemic, so that there is a co-presence of two concepts of disease, disease as a natural phenomenon, and disease as divine punishment. 6

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1952: 244) notes a 1580 saying “God doth helpe those in their affaires, which are industrious: according to Homere” (Baret, Alveary) and “Help thyself, and God will help thee” in Herbert, 1640.

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The idea of punishment ranges in the foreground of such patterns. Within the biblical tradition, the plague has come to be interpreted as the “just wrath of God”.7 This tradition is upheld in medical tracts like Sir Richard Blackmore’s A Discourse upon the Plague, of 1721: This dreadful Calamity is inflicted immediately by the Hand of God, or at his Command by the Ministry of his invisible Angels. … When He intends to manifest his being, Providence and just Government over Mankind, to chastise extraordinary Provocations, He pours down from Heaven Divine Vengeance upon a Nation harden’d by Impiety and obstinate in Wickedness. … And when Physicians and Naturalists have puzzled their Reason in searching after the Origine of any particular Plague … it will be an Argument of their Wisdom, Penetration and Piety to ascribe it to the Finger of God. (28-29; cit. in Landa, 275-76)

It is difficult not to hear the echo of this passage in Journal of the Plague Year, and Defoe’s Due Preparations. Journal of the Plague Year was not Defoe’s only contribution on the subject of the plague. Apart from some journalistic pieces, he published Due Preparations to the Plague , as well for Soul as Body in February 1722, about a month before the Journal. Louis Landa describes Due Preparations in the following terms: … In a tone persistently monitory Defoe shows how a family may save both body and soul, the body by ‘due preparations’ in shutting out the world after diligent, far-sighted arrangements, the soul by understanding that the plague is a divine visitation and that one should submit to it by penitence, reformation, and dependence upon infinite mercy. (Landa, 271)

It seems that in Due Preparation Defoe takes a more conservative stance and in contrast to the Journal, does not allow for any moral ambiguity in tone or narration. We read the following passage in his introduction to Due Preparations: … the whole World is intent and busy on their ordinary Occasions; Men pursue the usual Course of the World, they push their Interest, their Gain, or their Pleasure and Gaity, with the same Gust, or rather more than ever: Nay, the cry of the Nation’s Follies, grows lowder and lowder every Day; and so far we are from considering, that when God’s 7

Louis Landa. “Religion, Science, and Medicine in A Journal of the Plague Year”. Reprinted in Backscheider, Paula R. (ed.) Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year. New York, London: Norton, 1992. 275.

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Judgments are abroad in the Earth, the Inhabitants should learn the Righteousness; that we are rather learning to be more superlatively wicked than ever; witness the Increase of Plays and Play-Houses … witness the Publick Trading and Stock-jobbing on the Sabbathday; Witness the raging Avarice of the Times, by which the Civil Interest of the Nation is ruin’d and destroy’d; Witness also our Feuds, Divisions and Heats, as well in religious Differences, as those that are Political, which are all carry’d up to dreadful Extremes. (DP, 10-11)

When the plague was finally abating, H. F. makes the following comment: Nor was this by any new Medicine found out, or new Method of Cure discovered, or by any Experience in the Operation, which the Physicians or Surgeons had attained; but it was evidently from the secret invisible Hand of him, that had at first sent this Disease as a Judgement upon us; and let the Atheistic part of Mankind call my Saying this what they please, it is no Enthusiasm; it was acknowledg’d at that time by all Mankind; the Disease was enervated, and its Malignity spent, and let it proceed from whencesoever it will, let the Philosophers search for Reasons in Nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to lessen the Debt they owe to their Maker; those Physicians, who had the least Share of Religion in them, were oblig’d to acknowledge that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no Account could be given of it. (JPY, 191)

Thus, the narrator not only emphasizes that the development of the disease, it appearance and disappearance, depends on God’s mercy, he is also stressing that science or philosophy is helpless in the face of the disaster. Still, it is important to note that the theory of divine wrath was not supported by many writers at the time and according to Landa, Defoe did not subscribe to it: […] the theory of divine wrath in its full implications ran counter to the rationalistic spirit of the Enlightenment. The horrors of the plague and its magnitude, along with the human failure to cope with it, gave cogency to the idea that a divine agency is involved; but only an occasional writer on plague in Defoe’s day was willing to defend the extreme position that the plague is an extraordinary, direct, and immediate interposition of the deity, an intervention in or suspension of the laws of nature. … miraculous intervention … a thing of the past. (276)

Although the passage from JPY, just quoted before, seems to accept the plague as a divine punishment, other passages display quite a different attitude, as for example when H. F. observe that the poor were the most badly hit by the plague, simply for the reason that they could not avoid going out and that they were

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obliged to do exactly the kind of work that brings you in touch with the disease, like burying the dead (JPY, 75). There is no implication that the plague should be seen as a punishment for poverty. But the contrast demonstrates that as rational explanations take precedence, the consideration of supernatural causes is given the hue of irrationality. It is worth noting that the passage in question is from the very end of the Journal. H. F. never tires to say that he is no enthusiast. One might say that an enthusiast is someone prideful enough to delude himself into believing that he has been inspired with true divine knowledge (cf. Heyd). The entire book in its detailed collection of facts and stories and interpretation contests such a view of individual spiritual revelation. The narrator is anxious to distinguish himself both from the enthusiast and from the scientist. One might note that the new philosophers were accused of being enthusiasts, because they claimed that by their methods they could discover new knowledge. On the last pages of the Journal, the narrator’s tone grows more monitory. It seems to indicate that Defoe was careful that the book should not be misread as in any way unorthodox. An epidemic is a societal challenge. The ways in which society deals with disease, the ways in which the victims are treated, are sometimes said to show the state of a society. In the Journal, we find that the text is absorbed with the sheer physical side of the disease, the entire city is one tomb, it seems. Interestingly, Sontag observes that the less the historian of an illness is convinced that the disease be a punishment for the wickedness of the people, the more probable it is that this same historian will stress the corruption of the age (cf. “Illness as Metaphor”). Even if the disease is not thought to be a punishment, it becomes a punishment because during the epidemic the extent of the depravity of the society will become evident. H. F. addresses this problem, but while he is tempted to adopt such an interpretation of the disease, he ultimately resists it. Thus, he narrates the incident in the Tavern near the great mass grave he visits quite at the beginning of the epidemic, where he is confronted with people who’ve decided that the best behaviour in the face of imminent death is to celebrate, get drunk and ridicule anyone exhibiting piety or solemnity. Admonished by H. F. they laugh at him. This leads H. F. to consider seriously, whether the city does not deserve to be punished. Clearly, the plague can bring out the worst in people. Indeed, their behaviour becomes a test of his faith, requiring H. F. to pray for them and clear himself of any ill feelings he had harboured (JPY, 57-60). Then, H. F. makes it clear that it is not up to him to judge whether anyone deserves punishment. Moreover, he also gives examples where the moment of crisis which forces people to fall back on their own

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resources, brings out the best in people, as in the story of the three men, of the soldier, the sailor and the baker (JPY, 100ff.). In JPY, disease itself is the metaphor for something else.8 One can think of several ways to interpret JPY. Certainly, one can read it as an allegorical tale. The question is however what kind of truth it tries to capture. Indeed, it is in Defoe’s interest to maintain the allegorical possibilities of conventional explanations, like the sinfulness of the age. As Max Novak suggests, the city of London during the Plague can be read in terms of an analogy to the state in chaos. A typological reading would lead the reader to see the plague in analogy to biblical disasters. The lesson to be drawn from such a reading seems to me quite evident. The city of London has been purged from its evils by the disease sent by divine Providence. It is important to note how familiar Defoe was or must have been not only with the Scriptures and moralist writings (interpreting the plague), but also with different types of interpretation. For the text can be read allegorically, typologically, literally or metaphorically, and I would claim that when Defoe is being completely literal, one may read this literality as a meta-textual comment on his narrative form, as one will understand the metaphorical subtexts of a novel like the Journal. In the Journal as well as in History of Apparitions, the narrator’s metatextual comments display an awareness of questions of authority and truth. The narrator seeks to justify his method of presentation, his choice of stories, his confidence in the stories he is telling. Every reasonable man can find evidence and collect experience to gain true knowledge about the world (cf. Shapin 16f.). In HA, Defoe addresses this problem in the following manner: I shall bring one Example now within my own Knowledge, and in which I had some Concern; not but that other Accounts may be as authentick as this, tho’ I cannot so 8

Significantly, in Due Preparations, Defoe in fact uses metaphors to describe the disease: “… when the Enemy is at the Door, all the forces of Nature are to be muster’d together; … No Garrison ought to have their Fortifications to build, when the Siege against them is laid; all the Parts should be done and finished before, and when the Siege is laid and the Enemy are Battering their Works the Business then is to Counter Batter him, Harrass him with continual Sallies, and be Vigilant, ready on all his Assaults to repel his Forces. The Simily or Allusion, I hope, is not improper, due Evacuations [he means use of laxatives] as above, and after that temperate and wholesome Dyet are the Fortifications of Nature … when the Enemy is come, then reasonable Encouragement ought to be given to the Animal Spirits, which are the Garrison that are to defend the Fortress of Life…” (DP, 40).

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positively vouch them at second or third hand. When I offer those to you, therefore, I tell you honestly that I have such and such Relations from good Hands, or I have such a Story by me in Manuscript, and I leave you to make such use of them as you please. This Caution of mine, however, ought not to lessen the Credit of any of the Relations here publish’d; for why may not the Account given by another Hand be as true as this which I give you from my own Knowledge; and why must an Author, in such cases as these, be made answerable for the Particulars of every History, or be bound to leave it out, which would be the Reader’s loss, not his own. (HA, 158)

To rely on other people’s authority, on other people’s experience, to turn to someone else for relevant knowledge is in contradiction to this epistemological confidence. If anything, a man trusting his own reason, relying on his own resources, would be challenging other people’s information and call them into doubt (cf. Shapin 17f.). But we find that in JPY as well as in HA, the narrators do rely on other people’s testimony. What seems to be requisite however is that the narrators “know” the witnesses personally. Certainly, reliance on prior knowledge is acceptable. For, after all, knowledge without trust, without accepting existing stories, if you will, is near impossible. But it is also true for both texts, JPY and HA, that existing accounts must be negotiated in some ways. So, the narrators of both texts ar not subscribing to a radical empiricist stance. One of the first problems we encounter in Journal of the Plague Year and especially also in HA, is whether or not one can trust human reason. The reasonable man, such would seem to be the general message, is capable of weighing other people’s stories and qualifying them. But can we trust ourselves? In the preface to HA, having pointed out the disbelievers and the gullible, Defoe goes on to say: “How to bring the World to a right Temper between these Extreams is a Difficulty we cannot answer for; but if setting things in a true light, between Imagination and solid Foundation, will assist towards it, we hope this Work may have some Success” (HA, 39, my emphases). One device that Defoe employs to this end is what might be called “meta-textual comments”. On the one hand, these commentaries seem to be meant to guide the reader to the right understanding or assessment of the treatise, as on p. 72, where the commentary grows into a diatribe against modern manners. On the other hand, Defoe points out the value or validity of his material or his method of narration, as for example, on p. 97: “But to leave arguing upon Inscrutables, let us come to Narration of Facts” (HA, 97). And in the passage following, in what may be an ironic reflection on the short statement just quoted, Defoe goes on to introduce yet another anecdotal story, in the following terms:

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I have another Account received from a particular Acquaintance in a neighbouring Nation. I could name Persons and Places in a more exact manner to these Accounts; but some Reasons of State forbid us at this time to enter into the Circumstances of Families. For where Matters of Apparition and Witchcraft are the Substance of the History, it has never been found reasonable to name Houses and Families; and as this Apology will be allow’d to be just, I expect it will be accepted by the Reader in all the Examples I shall give of this kind [continuing: “A certain Person of Quality…”] (HA 97)

Looking at contemporary pamphlets recounting miracles and extraordinary events, discretion can hardly be accepted as a reason, because the reporters of such events are usually in earnest. Omitting names and details would rather indicate a satirical intention, if nothing else. There are also examples where the pamphleteer is intent upon showing that miracles and ghost apparitions do not occur in modern times, as well as pamphlets that ridicule the very idea of apparitions, especially of apparitions as evidence for divinity. More importantly, though, the story that Defoe then tells as his first factual account, displays one very strong and obvious feature: those “witnesses” from whose point of view the apparition and the events attending it are narrated disappear and are not cited for their testimony. Narratologically speaking, we have an omniscient narrator assuming the witnesses’ point of view and the metatextual stance toward the story told is dramatized and sublimated into the story. In JPY, H. F. uses first-hand experience and eye-witness accounts in writing his journal in an empirical manner. An example of this is the story of the Piper (JPY, 74-76), he first introduces his source, a man called John Hayward, the under-sexton and gravedigger of one parish (“St. Stephen Coleman-street”). He then tells the story first retelling what Hayward describes of situation and people involved, and reaching the central moment of the story, the Piper waking up among the dead on the gravedigger’s cart, H. F. takes up Hayward’s point of view, rendering the dialogue between the gravedigger and the Piper, as if he had witnessed it himself. He concludes “I know the Story goes, he set up his Pipes in the Cart, and frighted the Bearers, and others, so that they ran away; but John Hayward did not tell the Story so, nor say any Thing of his Piping at al; but that he was a poor Piper, and that he was carried away as above I am fully satisfied of the Truth of” (JPY, 76). H.F. has been checking a story that he had heard. And by making this final comment, H. F. gives the impression that he is not merely interested in telling an entertaining tale, but also in substantiating his status as trustworthy witness. In fact, the amount of detail is impressive. On the other hand, here, too, he dramatizes the story as if he had been there, and repeats the dialogue, as if he had said the words himself. Thus, the dramatization of a story

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does not count as proof for its authenticity. The meta-textual frame is needed, or else the dialogue has to be embedded in the narration as in the example of the Piper. A recurrent phrase in JPY and in HA as well is that the narrator says he is retelling a story “that is true in its Particulars”, so that he believes it to be a true story. Having already discussed the more general discursive movements involved in the “particularities” or the “historicity” of the stories, it is still worthwhile to revisit this point from a different point of view. In his short book The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell devotes one chapter to truth and falsehood. Whether something is true or false is a question that concerns us when we are dealing with our beliefs. Russell gives the example of a historical event. If I believe that Charles I was beheaded I believe truly. If I think that he died in bed, my belief is false. However, whether I am right or not is not an intrinsic quality of my belief, I am just as clear and convinced in my belief, regardless of truth or falsehood. Even though “truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to other things, not upon any internal quality of the beliefs” (Russell 87f.). We tend to think of truth as some form of correspondence between belief and fact (Russell 88). This appears to be the writer’s argument for testing his anecdotal evidence in Journal of the Plague Year and History of Apparitions. To say a story is true in its particulars, that is, all the details and facts given are in keeping with the story, would seem to be saying that its truth is decided by its correspondence with facts. However, the theory of truth as some form of correspondence between belief and fact is not without difficulty, because one must determine the nature of that correspondence. And for the reader of the JPY and HA it is quite clear that one must rely on the narrator to be both trustworthy and sceptical. It is a question of status and education. Moreover, as Russell points out, it is a problem to think that “thought can never know when truth has been attained”, because truth is held to consist in a correspondence of thought with something outside thought (Russell 88). For many philosophers, this second point is unsatisfactory. For them, the task is to find a definition of truth “which shall not consist in relation to something wholly outside belief”. One such definition is to argue that “truth consists in coherence”. According to such a definition, we recognize the falsehood of our beliefs when they fail to be coherent as a body of beliefs. One might be tempted to turn this phrase of “the truth in particulars” to mean the opposite. For presenting a story as authentic and true in fact also means to present a narration as giving a coherent picture of the story. Indeed, the narrator of the Journal rejects some stories for being too coherent: “of what Part soever

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you heard the Story, the Particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet double Clout on a dying Man’s Face, and that of smothering a young Gentlewoman; so that it was apparent, at least to my Judgment, that there was more of Tale than of Truth in those Things” (JPY, 72). The problem with this theory of truth as truth consisting in coherence in our beliefs is that there is, as Russell says, “no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible”. Defoe must have been perfectly aware of this problem. After all, no other professional makes as perfect use of this as the writer of fictions. Russell allows coherence as an important test of truth “after a certain amount of truth has become known, but not as giving the meaning of truth (89). It would seem reasonable to assume that Defoe would have agreed. In JPY and to some extent in HA as well, it is important whose voice is narrating a story, who the source is and on whose authority we are to understand that something is true or not. While truth is social in the sense that we have to rely on others for knowledge of things we cannot experience ourselves, truth is also social in the sense that it needs to be shared and controlled. Quite at the beginning of the Journal (JPY, 20-25), H. F. becomes aware of the effects of fear and terror on the imagination. In particular, he describes how he meets with a crowd in the street; each of this group of people is convinced that they see an apparition. It is clearly a case of hysteria; one woman describes what she supposedly sees in such detail that other people begin imagining also seeing an apparition. H. F. notes that he look’d earnestly as the rest, but perhaps, not with so much Willingness to be impos’d upon; and I said indeed, that I could see nothing, but a white Cloud, bright on one Side, by the shining of the Sun on the other Part. The Woman endeavour’d to shew it me, but could not make me confess, that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had, I must have lied: But the Woman turning upon me, look’d in my Face, and fancied I laugh’d; in which her Imagination deceiv’d her too; for I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the poor People were terrify’d, by the Force of their own Imagination. (JPY, 23)

In the end, he leaves, rather afraid they might hurt him. This picture of the terrified mob that cannot be controlled, cannot be taught or convinced of their delusion, is mindful of Glanvill’s description of the force of the imagination which can delude one’s understanding if overpowered by something as strong as the terror that this mob is under. The imagination is necessary in our conception of truth, because it allows us to reconstruct in our minds a complete or coherent picture of events, but the imagination is at the same time the place in the mind which is most vulnerable to fear and misinformation. Indeed, in HA the imagination or fancy is a very ambivalent entity.

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In JPY, we see a community in distress, in despair and confusion, as H. F. would put it. As the narrator of these events, H. F. is, as we have seen, careful with his material, weighing the information and trying to compile as coherent a picture as possible, bent on presenting a history true to his beliefs. In the course of the Journal, H. F. gives us two stories that differ from the rest of the Journal. They effectively stage the core messages of the Journal with regard to its truth and moral intents, so, they function as a mis-en-abîme of the text. The first story is the story of the three craftsmen, which was already mentioned above. In the Journal, too, the story is referred to repeatedly before H. F. actually tells it. The three men, all of them rather poor, have to rely on their intelligence and their skills. They decide to escape to the countryside. They are successful and survive the plague by their escape. The second story is the H. F.’s encounter with a waterman, a poor man, who lives of bringing fresh water supplies to ships moored on the river. This time, H. F. is walking along the river and he meets this poor man, whose family has to stay in their house because one of the children is ill. The waterman is an image of Christian virtues, true in his love for his family. He tries to help them, although he might have run away. H. F. makes sure to tell us that this waterman is no hypocrite, but really a good man, thus implying that he himself is not quite sure if he is to believe the virtues of this man. It could be argued that by placing these poor men at the heart of the narrative, by allowing the characters an immediate expression, H. F., and Defoe implicitly, is making a statement on the authority of their stories. Undoubtedly, he suggests that theirs is the right behaviour in the face of crisis. It is crucial to realise that the protagonists of his stories are simple people; they follow their own reason and their sense of faith. They are the positive counterparts of the mob that fell victim to its own hysteria. Notably, they are single individuals with names and professions, and not just part of an indeterminate crowd. The combination of reason, faith and social status would seem to imply that everyone, high or low, shares true insight. The simple men of these stories also embody Everyman. Despite the great detail of the narrative, they seem to become generic. Thus, at the heart of JPY there is an allegory of survival, which allows the narrator to depict a coherent picture of his beliefs. H. F. thus posits truth of belief above truth of fact, while maintaining the illusion of factuality of his stories. George Stubbes, a contemporary theologian, seems to express the feelings underlying H. F.’s allegory of survival in one of his sermons. Preaching on Solomon’s proverb “Trust in the Lord with all thine Heart: and lean not unto

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thine own Understanding” (Proverbs, 3. 5)9 he warns against “undue confidence” in one’s capacity for knowledge. Human judgement is liable to error and bias, he argues, and the types of knowledge that are available to us, observation, information and revelation, will be distorted by a misplaced trust in one’s own wisdom. It is interesting to read that he correlates the three types of knowledge to three kinds of misjudgement, singularity,10 superstition, and enthusiasm, respectively (Stubbes 8-9). But Stubbes holds that the trust in God “by obliging us to a diligent Use of all the Means of acquiring Knowledge, naturally leads us towards the Discovery of Truth”, whereas a Presumption in our own Understanding … by flattering us in a Neglect of Methods of informing and rectifying our Judgment, tends to detain us in Ignorance and Error: For since all Human Wisdom is imperfect, and chequered with Mistakes and Prejudices, this will ever be the Effect of such a Confidence …. We ought to be continually advancing in Knowledge, no less than in Virtue… (Stubbes ibid.)

So, to trust in God does not preclude faith in one’s own abilities. On the contrary, our reason is god-given and therefore, to use our judgement is an act of faith. Indeed, Stubbes goes further and says that “he that doubts, whether the Means afforded him are sufficient for the Discovery of Truth, so far as it is necessary to be known by him, betrays a manifest Distrust in God” (Stubbes 5). It might be said that JPY depicts the narrator as caught in this field of tensions 9

Stubbes, George. “A constant Search after Truth, the necessary Result of a Trust in God: And a Neglect of a free uninterrupted Enquiry into Religion, the Effect of Presumption. A Sermon Preach’d before the University of Oxford, December 21. 1721. With a Prefatory Epistle to the Vice-Chancellor. By George Stubbes. London: Printed by W. Wilkins, and sold by J. Peele, 1722.” ESTC Number T031623.

10 “Singularity” denotes a unique quality in just one object or individual, not shared with anybody or anything else. As such a quality, singularity is related to the concept of the supernatural, since the regular categories describing the natural do not apply to the supernatural. Even if there are laws and universals applying to the supernatural, it remains singular in relation to the natural. Thus, “singular” is synonymous with “particular”, which is the term used in chapters one and two. In addition, as Philip Fisher points out, if there is a “radical singularity” to the means and purposes of an experience, and if this experience is “incomparable”, the singular can be a qualifying trait of wonder and the sublime (6). The experience of both wonder and the sublime is typically aesthetic; with the arguable distinction that wonder is the response to an “aestheticization of delight” (2), whereas the sublime is a response to a fearful aspect (Fisher, 2-6).

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between trust in reason and trust in faith, and the concept of truth is likewise suspended between a conception of truth as related to fact and a concept of truth based solely on faith. It is noteworthy that in the Journal, H. F.’s own survival probably comes closest to a miracle, considering that he does not hesitate to go out and explore the city. As Louis Landa says, “… fortified in his faith, H.F. remains and is untouched by the plague, his deliverance being in his view ‘next to the miraculous’; and like the ‘wonderful Deliverances’ of some others, an intimation of ‘singular and remarkable Providence in the particular Instances’” (Landa 274). However, H. F. also tells us that it would really be best to run away from the Plague, which obviously serves to underscore the miraculous of his own experience. However, it also expresses an ambivalence of attitude, which Landa attributes to the fact that “Defoe reflects both traditional and contemporary views of plague, as on the one hand a divine visitation and on the other a natural calamity – a viewpoint which invited inconsistencies” (Landa 274). Defoe was at pains to show that while miracles and divine revelation ceased to happen after biblical times, that indeed the Bible is the only authentic account of true miracles and revelation, our present existence, our world, includes more than just material reality. Neither the Journal nor History of Apparitions tries to present the miraculous as something extraordinary. Comparing JPY and HA, one could argue that Defoe blurred the lines between fact and fiction.11 Admittedly, one can say that in JPY, Defoe was concerned to give his history of the plague a fictional framework to make it more palatable, whereas in HA, he was doing the near opposite. He uses a matter-offact, down-to-earth, earnest, scholarly voice to narrate what in many cases is at best pure fabrication, at worst a fraud. But while he is anxious to show the truthvalue of his stories in HA, in JPY, the question of whether or not this incident really happened attains a different quality. For their allegorical sense, it is 11 Defoe’s tendency to fictionalize elements of his supposedly factual tracts was briefly discussed above. The transfer of the epistemological consideration of facts and evidence into fiction is one of Defoe’s productive narrative strategies. Defoe does not always clearly distinguish between fact and fiction, but leaves the distinction open. Speaking of fiction and science, Ilse Vickers is more critical. She believes that “Defoe himself was unaware of such a distinction” (3). One could argue, however, that Defoe consistently moves in genres that allow for a high degree of latitude toward the factuality of the material, e.g. satires and novels, apart from fictionalised journals and biographies. Narrating a good story makes content more palatable. Moreover, the question is surely a perceptual one to see whether or not the act of telling alters our understanding of the material.

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irrelevant whether the story of the Piper or the story of the Waterman really took place. What matters is that they have become the vehicle of a belief in a divine truth accessible to everyone, not by some inspirational revelation, but by their simplicity, reason and common sense. Thus, Defoe succeeds in giving the story of the simple man a sacred character. He makes use of traditional patterns of explaining natural evils, but he renegotiates the concept of divine punishment and individual revelation by taking into account the human capacity for knowledge and doubt.

5.5 T HE F AILURE

OF

D IALOGIC E XCHANGE

According to John Locke, knowledge is “the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our beliefs” (Essay, IV.i.2). Locke emphasizes that knowledge depends on our ability to establish a valid relation between our perception of an object and our “beliefs”. Sometimes, however, knowledge does not result from direct sensory perception but is instead acquired by “acquaintance”. Stephen Shapin recounts John Locke’s anecdote of the king of Thailand, who insisted that there was no snow, since he had never seen it himself, and that the European ambassador was simply making fun of him (1994: 243). Defoe deals with the same problem, but from the opposite point of view. In Journal of the Plague Year, the narrator is absorbed in presenting evidence on his authority. He collects stories of incidences, which he either witnesses himself, or of incidences that were witnessed by his acquaintances. Whether or not they are valid pieces of evidence, his stories are performative firstly in the sense that they create the “true” history he purports to collect. Secondly, they stage the very act of gaining trust and knowledge by sharing, while highlighting the basic dialogic situation between interlocutors. By contrast, Robinson Crusoe and Roxana in different ways stage the failure of such dialogic exchange. In the case of both protagonists, knowledge of the world must be acquired, in the mercantile sense of obtaining property and in the metaphysical sense of understanding the workings of society and nature. With both protagonists, interacting with the world serves the purpose of ensuring their own sense of identity. Thus, when their ability to communicate is undermined, their grasp of their own self is jeopardized. However, Robinson’s isolation on the island is accidental. Roxana, on the other hand, herself introduces instability into her life as the trickster she is. Robinson Crusoe is the archetypal colonizer, a type of the Prodigal Son, and an early capitalist figure. The list might be continued: as was pointed out above,

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Crusoe is also something of an experimental philosopher. He is capable of listing the good and evils in the manner of an account book, which he calls “the Accompt”. It is represented as a two-column list in the printed page. The paratextual feature serves to remind the reader that the soul, too, lives and acts according to a spiritual economy (RC, 49f.). Robinson concludes: “Upon the whole, here was an undoubted Testimony, that there was scarce any Condition in the World so miserable” (50; my emphasis). Naturally, the good features on “the Credit Side of the Accompt”, as Robinson tells us (50). Speaking of his “condition” immediately leads him to speak of the objects he has so far been able to produce or collect, all of which are at first in “a confus’d Heap [of Goods]” (ibid.). By the immediate sequence of his narration Crusoe’s economy of the soul is likened to the state of his possessions surrounding him. Such externalisation is obviously useful as a narrative device. But the “undoubted Testimony” is in direct contrast to the “confus’d Heap”. Like the experimental philosopher, Crusoe must first of all bring order into the chaos, classify his objects and find the appropriate places for them, which is exactly what he does next: he describes his “Habitation” and how he adapts it to his needs. In his loneliness on the island, Robinson misses the companionship of other people, as he tells us.12 But over the years, he tames a parrot and keeps a dog. A somewhat disturbing analogy is that Friday, as the “savage”, seems part of this group. Whether this analogy is due to his ethnicity or his social rank as servant is not clear. However, one could also argue that Robinson has to learn to be deserving of company, and that there is a hierarchy from dog to parrot, to Friday and then the Spanish. Still, the general lack of distinction remains disturbing. Having said that, the parrot has an important function. Without real interaction there cannot be real knowledge. As was mentioned in the first chapter, the parrot is Locke’s example for empty language mimicking sound. In RC, the parrot becomes a reflection on the possibility of empty representation. The animal learns to mimic Robinson and speak his name. At one point, it scares Robinson because it makes him assume the presence of another human (RC, 113-4; in Angelick Vision of the World, the parrot is given more prominence). That he should fall for the parrot’s voice is in itself implausible; however, it suggests that what matters is the symbol which the parrot represents. Like an echo, the bird cannot produce real meaning. If the 12 As Novak points out “religion … gives [Robinson] a rationale for what he is already doing in striving to survive. It gives him hope, and before the arrival of Friday, it gives him a being with whom he can hold an imaginary dialogue … He is a man imprisoned on a real and symbolic island… books about isolation and imprisonment may tell us more about Robinson Crusoe than tomes of casuistry” (1983: 44).

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parrot stands for an emptiness of representation, the symbol continues Defoe’s critique of language. But in this case, it is difficult to see how the general scepticism inherent in the picture of a purely material being with any transcendental signifier can be read as an assertion of an ontological truth. Rather, the empty language shows that there is no knowledge without representation. If the parrot is a successful image for Robinson’s being cut off from a real dialogue, it is equally successful in undermining both the concept of knowledge as dialogic, and the idea that it is possible to know what is beyond representation. In Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe develops the Robinson persona into more than a narrator; Defoe turns Robinson into an essayist. Similarly to other assumed persona in Defoe’s work, the voice of Robinson forces a point of view onto the reader that distances the subject matter from the reader, effectively introducing a polemical other into the text which might be read almost in terms of a dramatic monologue. Robinson’s essay “On Solitude” extemporizes on the ancient theme “know thyself”. This motif would guide the visitor to the oracle in Delphi. In Robinson’s world, “man can never want Conversation, who is Company for himself; and he that cannot converse profitably with himself, is not fit for any Conversation at all” (1720: 2-3). Robinson insists that man is existentially alone: “What are the Sorrows of other Men to us? And what their Joy? Something we may be touch’d indeed with, by the Power of Sympathy, and a secret Turn [ie. A change that cannot be explained] of the Affections; but all the solid Reflection is directed to our selves” (ibid.). Distinguishing reason and sympathy or affection, Robinson stresses the primacy of subjectivity: Our Meditations are all Solitude in Perfection; our Passions are all exercised in Retirement; we love, we hate, we covet, we enjoy, all in Privacy and Solitude: All that we communicate of those Things to any other, is but for their Assistance in the Pursuit of our Desires; the End is at Home; the Enjoyment, the Contemplation, is all Solitude and Retirement; ’tis for our selves we enjoy, and for our selves we suffer. (ibid.)

The aim, according to Robinson, is to find “the Silence of Life”. Having said this, Robinson recognizes that such solitude is not “suited to the Christian”. He thus develops the theme of subjectivity into a question of happiness, that is, into the question of how to find what one is “suited” for, since happiness is defined as the fulfilment of one’s inclinations and ability. Real “solitude” however consists in the “contemplation” of “sublime Things”. Solitude should not be mistaken with “confinement”, Robinson argues, and thus gives form to a

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recurring topic in Defoe’s work: the transition from the perception and recognition of certain knowledge to the practice of a happy life, which always demands both retreat and interaction, meditation as well as dialogue.

5.6 E NACTING KNOWLEDGE : S ELF - FASHIONING IN R OXANA As part of his confessional journey Robinson finds certainty in his beliefs. Erving Goffman observes that “in our society the very significant assumption is generally made that all events – without exception – can be contained and managed within the conventional system of beliefs. We tolerate the unexplained but not the inexplicable” (1974: 30). To ask for evidence is to ask for some form of verification. Defoe repeatedly places the burden of evidence and the burden of judgment with the individual. Robinson Crusoe and Roxana share the feature that knowledge is described in negative terms, which in each case highlights a different aspect. In Roxana, the image of blindness and deafness emphasizes that knowledge entails moral obligation, whereas in RC, knowledge leads above all to religious insight. Knowledge as a concept is thus freighted with moral connotations. It needs to be enacted to be fully realized. Roxana is a tale of guilt and recognition. Other than Moll Flanders, the protagonist cannot argue necessity as the reason for her actions. Roxana’s story being told in the mixed form of fictional autobiography and “secret history”, the novel relies heavily on the tension of secrecy and knowledge. Secrecy can range from not revealing a proper name to active deception; whereas knowledge can range from a brief encounter with the protagonist to the situation of intimately shared knowledge between the protagonist and her maid. In Roxana, information is both a commodity as well as an instrument of control. The protagonist depends on her superior understanding of a situation and goes to great lengths never to find herself in situations in which she cannot control the flow of information. Like a confidence artist or a magician, Roxana is capable of manipulating her audience into believing what they see, rather than what they might know, thus proving the bias human perception is subject to. What is more, she also understands that she must aim to manipulate those among her audience who are in fact willing victims to the fictions she creates. In this world, theatricality constitutes reality. The idea of knowledge as a social construction is no longer a desirable fantasy, but becomes suspicious. In Roxana, the “evidential story” which has been described in terms of its purposes in testimony, and mis-en-abîme, and which has been defined as fable,

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recurs but in a different setting and with a transformed function. Not unlike A Journal of the Plague Year, the narration of such stories resembles “human interest stories”. Goffman observes that he prefers working with such human interest stories, because they represent events which are not so much evidence of a fact, but they offer a “design of […] reported event” which is “fully responsive to our demands – which are not for facts but for typifications” (Frame Analysis, 14). As he argues Their telling demonstrates the power of our conventional understandings to cope with the bizarre potentials of social life, the furthest reaches of experience. What appears, then, to be a threat to our way of making sense of the world turns out to be an ingeniously selected defense of it. (14-5)

If this thought is brought to bear on Roxana, it helps to explain why Defoe would choose a protagonist who is so thoroughly subversive in her intelligence and impenitence. Goffman further claims that We press these stories to the wind; they keep the world from unsettling us. By and large, I do not present these anecdotes, therefore , as evidence or proof, but as clarifying depictions, as frame fantasies which manage, through the hundred liberties taken by their tellers, to celebrate our beliefs about the workings of the world. (Frame Analysis, 14-5)

The similarity of this proposition to the underlying rationale of Defoe’s narrative is surely obvious. If read as a forage into social psychology true to Goffman’s frame analysis, Roxana would be the most provocative but also the most conservative of Defoe’s fictions. In Roxana’s world, everything has economic value. Like Robinson and Moll, Roxana seems to be keeping a tally at all times, calculating what event or encounter would translate into how much value. The world functions according to rules of exchange. In Roxana’s world, indeed, the value of anything can be measured in money. Honour translates into the amount of money that a person, usually a suitor, is willing to give. Love translates into the amount of money flowing into her lifestyle. Identity translates into the quantity and kind of objects Roxana possesses. Knowledge follows a similar economics. True to Francis Bacon’s proverbial statement, knowledge is power. To Roxana’s mind, power is yielded by people of independent means; for this reason, she refuses to marry again (Rox, 194ff.). Knowledge can be given, withheld and indeed sold or bought. “To know” someone means to know a person’s name and whereabouts, which is a great

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instrument of power to Roxana. Alternatively, “to know” can mean to have sexual intercourse with the person in question. Moreover, it may also mean “to recognise”. In the first instance, knowledge does not imply a deeper understanding; it simply describes the quality of information which a person may possess. In the world of Roxana, the possibilities of such knowledge seems endless. Roxana is most afraid of being given away and exposed. Likewise, she describes her own ability to delude and deceive people. Thus, if as above argued the concept of knowledge in Defoe’s work is based on the idea of interaction, Roxana violates the rule of trust necessary to make the gain of knowledge possible. Her behaviour undermines the idea of a community sharing knowledge. Her criminal sociopathic potential is evident. Roxana’s obsession with control and scripting her life is highly problematic; her manipulative skills and her ability to maneuver in society are suggestive of a psychopathic character disorder. Her shock at the unexpected events at the very end of her life is the result of her previous ability to script her life in order to uphold complete predictability over situations and possible outcomes of events. Indeed, the blatant didacticism of the narrative suggests that Roxana’s unwillingness to communicate is her moral and religious undoing, since it prevents her from knowing her own self. The moralist subtext of Roxana as well as Robinson suggests that such self-knowledge is necessary. It is a form of recognition. In other words, Defoe justifies the form of autobiography as a way to conversion by making the problem of self-knowledge obvious. For this reason, that is, Roxana’s unwillingness or indeed inability to recognise herself, the very form of the narrative is set up to fail in Roxana. Once Roxana reaches a point in her life where she can look back and tell her story, she is indeed capable of distancing herself from her story and set it into context, but even at this point she cannot free herself completely. In her eyes, she is “damned”. Again, the problem is the act of interpretation. One can argue that to Defoe it is always dialogic. It requires the presence of a second participant, which for example can be seen when interpretation fails. Roxana, for instance, observes that “if I had not been one of the foolishest, as well as wickedest Creatures upon Earth, I cou’d never have acted thus… I was stupid and senceless, deaf…” (198f.). If possibly doubtful knowledge is subject to the various complications of social interaction, then error and deception may be thought of as special types of failed communication, and miscommunication, respectively. At the end of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman states that he uses the theatre to provide him with the illustrative language and metaphors to describe specific speech situations and social interaction (250). This can be applied to Roxana, who is very conscious of the theatrical aspect of her social

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life. Roxana begs the question what it might mean to be performing to the audience when passing on knowledge. Roxana’s manipulation of the transmission of information relies on her understanding of human nature as biased. Perception is subjective, and while one may be certain of what one knows about oneself, knowledge of others depends on their presentation of what they are willing to share. Having returned from Holland, and being rich and independent, Roxana begins her second London life, this time as a French lady living on Pall Mall. In possibly the most notorious scene of the narrative, Roxana dances in the disguise of a Turkish princess. Notably, she does not veil her face, but she wears an elaborate dress that she describes in detail. The image of the dress, not unlike the armour of Achilles in the Iliad, serves to catalogue her attributes, consisting of gold embroidery, pearls, and turquoise, but notably also, of false diamonds (215). Her dance wins her the name “Roxana”. If earlier, Roxana’s sense of identity is interwoven with the amount and quality of her possessions, or absence thereof, now, in addition, the masque is her identity. It underlines that Roxana has become a mirror to the scene she tells us about. Retrospectively, Roxana comments: This magnificent Doings equally both pleas’d and supriz’d [sic] me, and I hardly knew where I was; but especially, that Notion of the King being the Person that danc’d with me, puff’d me up to that Degree, that I not only did not know any-body else, but indeed, was very far from knowing myself. (218)

The passage does not lack didacticism. Roxana attributes her loss of selfhood to her vanity, her being “puff’d up”. But instead of expanding on the theme of vanity, for example, by pointing out the obvious show of luxuries in the social scene that Roxana moves in, the narrator reiterates the same thought as Robinson voices in Serious Reflections. Roxana does “not know herself”, and loses her sense of the other. She sees herself as incapable of making assumptions about the identity and the character of others. The world of make-belief has taken over her reality. She interacts with persons who remain anonymous to her, but has completely taken over her “stage” character. When asked to host a party again in the subsequent days, Roxana is very gratified to learn that the yet unidentified “Gentlemen” will bring food and wine themselves, as well as in fact paying Roxana for letting them use her apartment. Going into some detail of the planning of this party, Roxana tells the reader that she was going to provide the tableware, but that the gentlemen insisted on bringing their own. Happily, she concludes “so it [the china] was set all up in a

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large Glass-Cupboard in the Room I sat in, where it made a very good Show indeed” (219). Surrounded by her possessions, and in fact wearing them for display, Roxana is likened to the “glass cupboard”, at once see-through, reflecting, and void of characteristics other than its being transparent. The erasure of a sense of self is continued when the narrator similarly objectifies herself by comparing herself to “plate” After the End of what I call my Retreat, and out of which I brought a great deal of Money, I appear’d again, but I seem’d like an old Piece of Plate that had been hoarded up some Years, and comes out tarnish’d and discolour’d ; so I came out blown, and look’d like a cast-off Mistress, nor indeed, was I any better; tho’ I was not at-all impair’d in Beauty, except that I was a little fatter than I was formerly, and always granting that I was four Years older. (224)

Likewise, the theme of containing modes of existence is continued by the repeated use of box-like situations, allowing the protagonist to control the meaning of whatever event takes place within the environment. The theatrical is more than a metaphor to Roxana, it is a way of life. It allows her to live a fantasy. When confronted with undesired events, her way of dealing with them is to worry about the outward appearance of what happens. One such episode occurs during Roxana’s London time. Roxana’s town houses all have doors that open into the park. Her second house provided by her second London lover, the “Lord”, for whom she has no sincere feeling (225). Roxana creates her own locus amoenus: a private garden with a door not just to the house but another door to the park through which her lover may enter. The place she inhabits thus reflects the life she leads: a respectable veneer to the street covers the disreputable part of her life. The setting of this scene is one of erotic fantasy: in a very handsome House […] where he had a convenient Way to come into the Garden, by a Door that open’d into the Park; a thing very rarely allow’d in those Times. By this Key he cou’d come in at what time of Night or Day he pleas’d; […] he cou’d come directly into my Bed-Chamber. N.B. I was not afraid I shou’d be found a-bed with any-body else, for, in a word, I convers’d with no-body at-all. (228)

The fantasy is quickly replaced by the realities of the situation. If one was uncertain about the possibilities of the situation, to use Todorov’s phrase that the fantastic occupies the space of uncertainty before the quality of the event is decided (1975:25), one quickly learns better.

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In the pattern of the illustrative fable, Roxana gives an account of what “happen’d pleasantly enough one Night” (228). The lover enters the bedroom to find Roxana and her maid Amy sleeping. He wakes them up, and a little bit drunk, as Roxana tells us, insists on finding out whether Amy is a man or a woman. He physically attacks Amy and apparently undresses her enough to make sure. As Roxana says, she thought he might “carry’d the Jest on before my Face” (228), but that he “was not so hot either” (ibid.). This quite dramatic and certainly explicit scene ends with Roxana going to bed with her lover in another room. Roxana cannot refrain from telling the reader that she had not changed her undergarments before she went to bed that night (229), thus shifting the centre of the erotic tension back to herself. Being teased about the episode a day later by the lord, Amy “was surpriz’d , and a little hurried, that she scarce knew where she was”. Roxana is not too worried about Amy’s reputation: “she was, as to his Lordship, as nice a Lady as any in the World, and for any-thing he knew of her, she appear’d as such; the rest was to us only that knew of it” (229). Not only is the motif of role-play extended to include the fantasy of cross-dressing, the episode again demonstrates Roxana’s ability to spin knowledge to suit her purposes. On the one hand, Roxana lives for the performance. But on the other hand, the theatrical in fact provides her with the language to speak about herself. In the part of her story during which she is with the French prince (see before), she bears a child. Again, the narrator carefully stages the event, turning the reader into a spectator, and thus making him or her complicit in what happens. The scene is Roxana in childbed, just having given birth to a son. She invites her lover into her room as soon as “they had adjusted things about me” to see their son (115). The theatrical aspect of the scene of childbirth is underlined, by Roxana’s description of the room in which she gives birth. Her lover is in the house but at first outside the room. If set in theatre, one would imagine a partitioning wall on the stage giving the spectator a view of both the Prince waiting outside the door for news, which is promptly delivered by Amy (and rewarded by the Prince), and of Roxana, in the inside room, invisible to the eye of the spectator at first. It is a space that she arranges and manipulates at her will. The labour of birth is removed to the background by Roxana who promises to make “as few Cries as possible, to prevent disturbing him”. The physical facts of the situation are relegated to the margin by Roxana herself in order to make the advent of the child as “agreeable” as possible to the Prince. Indeed, the scene almost has the quality of a nativity scene. Roxana does her best to make the situation as acceptable to her lover as she can.

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This episode is immediately followed by the narrator’s comment on the scene. Since this, and when I have look’d back upon these things with Eyes unpossess’d with Crime, when the wicked Part has appear’d in its clearer Light, and I have seen it in its own natural Colours; when no more blinded with the glittering Appearances, which at that time deluded me, and, as in like Cases, if I may guess at others by myself; too much possess’d the Mind; I say, since this, I have often wonder’d, with what Pleasure, or Satisfaction, the Prince cou’d look upon the poor innocent Infant; which, tho’ his own, and that he might that Way have some Attachments in his Affections to it, yet must always afterwards be a Remembrancer to him of his most early Crime; and which was worse, must bear upon itself, unmerited, an eternal Mark of Infamy, which should be spoken of, upon all Occasions, to its Reproach, from the Folly of its Father, and Wickedness of its Mother. (115-6)

The narrator does not draw attention to the theatrical artificiality of the scene. On the contrary, the visual illusion is maintained, but now it is interpreted in moralist terms. It reveals the uneasy connection between the visual language used to describe the processes of the mind and the manipulation of the perception of the scene of both the Prince and the spectator. Roxana may be playing with the theatrical, and she is certainly able to manipulate her surroundings into playing along. But if it is in the nature of this type of dramatic situation to pull in the reader as a spectator, the reader is able to withdraw when confronted with the voice of Roxana who is clearly not capable to disentangle herself from her own fictions. From her point of view as looking back, she realises her own involvement and her self-deception, but she is only capable to speak about it in terms of “possession” and “wonder”, which only describe her presuming a passive role in her life. Moreover, despite her eloquence such language draws attention to her inability to actually understand what she did. She can only wonder.

5.7 S UMMARY Defoe uses parables to highlight particular points he wishes to represent. He generally, if not quite always, uses the parabolic form when his narrators tell a particularly meaningful episode of their lives. The narrators will always provide an interpretation as well as a justification for the story. Furthermore, it can be argued that the communicative situation of Defoe’s parables is dialogic and

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dramatic. It involves the interaction between at least two parties, usually the narrator and someone he or she encounters. Typically, the frame of this situation is defined by the narrator being both a person engaged in the situation and the person then interpreting the event. One can transform this pattern and argue that basic knowledge transmission works along the same lines: the knowledgeable party passes on some content to the person inquiring and subsequently interpreting the content. Moreover, the dramatic quality of the exchange is fully acted out, and rendered in detail. In itself, this introduces the idea of theatricality into the parabolic form. Evidence and the attesting to this evidence, then, seems to become a matter of performance within this frame that allows for interpretation by the second person. Defoe’s parables provide the reader with blueprint image of the phenomenology and experience of knowledge acquisition. In the world of the narratives, as well as the supernatural tracts, knowledge is both a social enterprise relying on trust and an intensely subjective experience. Furthermore, Defoe foregrounds the possibility of both deceit and bias, which undermines the very idea of constructing knowledge as a social, communal enterprise. One might be inclined to argue that Defoe effectively creates a fantasy or a utopia of a knowledge society by removing the obvious conflict between the two extremes of trust and subjectivity. Certainly, Defoe allows the two paradigms to work at the same time. What’s more, Roxana demonstrates his great awareness of the problems of trust: Roxana’s masterly misrepresentation of information is surely a inexorable exposure of the many ways in which communication can be manipulated. In this precarious contrast between the extremes of manipulation, ignorance, trust and knowledge , certainty becomes a desirable and desired quantity. There is no doubt that Defoe’s protagonists live in a determined cosmological order which even makes the transcendent accessible to them. Knowledge must be integrated into this framework, and it must be negotiated in the social realities.

6 Conclusion

Defoe’s work engages in the debates of his day, ranging from contributions on topics such as economic progress, religious polemics concerning the Dissenters, social problems such as poverty, to topics of party politics and current affairs as well as fictional works. The promotion of knowledge makes part of this wideranging work. Apart from factual treatises dealing with learning and education, such as Mere Nature Delineated, and An Essay Upon Projects, Defoe incorporates and appropriates the New Sciences into his fictional work. Robinson Crusoe is an exemplary empiricist when he solves the problems of his island existence by observation and experiment. H.F. collects data and relies on statistics to reach an assessment of the state of the city. Moll Flanders and Roxana keep painstakingly track of their personal information. To them, knowledge is an economic factor, jeopardizing or enabling their income. However, while few, if any, scholars would dispute the significance of the concept of knowledge for Defoe’s work, Defoe’s place in the more general context of the history of knowledge is yet debatable. The textual evidence of his work, as well as the biographical evidence (cf. Novak 1963 and 2001, Backscheider 1989, and Richetti, 2005), underline his almost voracious interest in new developments in all areas of human expertise, skill and knowledge. How far Defoe was aware of conceptual changes in the philosophy of knowledge, and, more importantly, how far he would have felt personally invested in the question, is less clear. One can argue, however, that his work embodies a syncretic attitude towards changes in thinking systems, which means that he appears willing to appropriate new insights into what he considers a working system, if they are not in too great a conflict with his spiritual views. Moreover, his fictions demonstrate a high awareness of the seemingly simple question of “what can I know”. Beyond the evident representation of knowledge in the form of the empiricist protagonists H.F. and Robinson, and beyond the obvious

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concern with the advantages of superior information, the basic question of what kind of knowledge is available to humankind informs Defoe’s work. The fascinating import of supernaturalism as an exploration of the methods and assumptions of science is its scope to try and apply empirical methods to something that is intrinsically not available to sensory experience. Even if on the surface of the argument supporters of a supernaturalist view defend that such experience is empirically possible, the discourse on the supernatural provides an important early critique of empiricism. After all, it posits that some insights may not be available as positive facts. As a result, the seventeenth-century philosophers and New Scientists concluded that science and religion must be treated as separate fields (Shapiro 16). On the other hand, as Lorraine Daston shows in her work on the history of science, the supernaturalists engaging in the debate, who thought that supernatural phenomena could not be studied in empirical settings and argued that science was simply not yet ready to deal with certain unexplained natural phenomena, were instrumental in the revision of philosophical thinking that was at the core of the Enlightenment. As Cassirer observes in his introduction to Die Philosophie der Aufklärung, the Enlightenment rejected the dogmaticism of earlier systems of thought, and instead adopted the idea that thought, or philosophy, should be systematic. In this context, Joseph Glanvill’s contribution deserves proper recognition as he attacked the dogmatic approach to science in the academy, even if Defoe rightly criticizes Glanvill’s application of early empirical methods to supernaturalism as enthusiasm. Defoe’s main contribution to supernaturalism is his historical understanding of religion and science. He places supernatural phenomena, such as the magic worked by the sorcerers and prophets of Biblical times, in the context of the cosmology appropriated by religions practised in the corresponding time. Moreover, his approach focuses on man. Thus, he presents historical descriptions even of modern incidents, which illustrate human behaviour. Moreover, Defoe combines the idea of singular experience, which finds its clearest expression in supernaturalism, with the form of parabolic narration. In the fictions, single episodes function like fables. Each episode engages the narrator-protagonist in a hermeneutic circle of understanding. In the supernatural tracts, he uses a similar technique to fictionalize the witnesses’ accounts. Fictionalization is equally a device of satirical distancing, a means to add a metatextual moral commentary. Consequently, the act of interpretation is heavily foregrounded. In the narratives, the protagonist-narrators as the central consciousness are styled as judge and interpreter. The subject’s autonomy is refracted by the

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recurrent themes of sincerity and deception, delusion as a form of self-deception, fear and anxiety. Defoe’s narrators and satiric personae are readers and observers. They try to make sense of their world; they attempt to construct a version of it that they can relate to. This basic process of understanding, of ambivalence and of truth-seeking, underlies Defoe’s work. It reveals itself when Defoe emulates Bacon who emphasizes the significance of poetic representation for religion in the form of similes and parables. Moreover, it shows in the moments of anxiety and alienation, when understanding is lacking. The need to interpret and to make sense of experience requires all of Defoe’s protagonists to interact with other characters. Only in the dialogic encounter can they be sure of their interpretation. As long as an individual remains singular in his experience, and isolated, his or her insights are not tenable, such is Defoe’s limitation of the subject’s autonomy. In order to do justice to the concept of knowledge within Defoe’s work, then, one has to acknowledge that possessing, understanding and imparting information are cognitive activities, which preoccupy Defoe in all his writing. Furthermore, Defoe is aware that one can bring about a new state of affairs by controlling the frames of communication. One may wonder whether Defoe considers the performative capacities of language to speak meaning actively into existence. The answer is yes and no. On the one hand, Defoe’s concept of language relies on a stable representational relationship between word and object. Meaning and truth exist independently of their linguistic representation. On the other hand, Defoe seems acutely aware of the manipulative and hence representational abilities of language. This view obviously accounts for a certain wariness of fiction on Defoe’s part, which is detectable in his work. Hence, just as there is evident knowledge, there is the possibility of delusion and deception. Defoe’s remarkable treatment of the latter possibility shows that despite misgivings about the manipulative properties of fiction, Defoe is apt to explore consciously what can be done in discourse with the state of “as if”, which might be defined as a positive version of delusion. In other words, Defoe arguably recognizes the similarity between fiction and scientific hypothesis. As was pointed out in chapter three, however, Defoe turns our attention to the workings of the imagination on which “as if” constructions depend. One might argue that Defoe’s curious attitude towards the purposes and uses of apparently irrational cognitive behaviour stems from his work on the supernatural discourse. Certainly, his criticism of enthusiasm in the supernatural tracts and the zealous characters in A Journal of the Plague Year stand in a direct connection. If H.F. cannot understand the irrational behaviour of people seeing angels in the sky and ghosts in alley-ways, he also cannot relate to the complete lack of inhibition of

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the unbelievers he meets after his visit to the great burial site. Both behaviours seem irrational to H.F. Each group is similarly fanatical and deaf to the voice of reason. The result of enthusiasm is a deep-seated bias toward the perception of the world. Defoe seems confident that this bias can be overcome by the studious application of empirical methods. Furthermore, the idea of foreknowledge figures large in his fiction. While ridiculed by some contemporaries and questioned by most, foreknowledge can be considered separately from its historical context in Biblical prophecy, or contemporary astrology. Defoe does not contradict the orthodox religious view of the truth of Biblical prophecy. But he seems to play with the idea of what it means to know beforehand, in sacred, but especially also in profane ways. In rational terms, foreknowledge translates quite simply into “planning for all eventualities”. Consider all options, and prepare for the most viable one, anticipate all possible consequences and prepare to fend off the worse. Such anticipation is an intellectual exercise. But it involves knowing and owning all kinds of information. Moreover, it requires that you be aware of your own bias and prejudice. Rational detachment to such a degree is difficult to accomplish, but characters like H.F. in Journal of the Plague Year, and Robinson Crusoe, practise such rationality with some success. Foreknowledge has a different side to it. Apart from the questions of rationality, it strongly evokes emotional responses. Anticipating danger, the subject will suffer from anxiety. Roxana, Moll, and H.F., as well as Robinson, are extremely anxious characters, whose narration is often concerned with fear and terror. As a kind of counter-measure to address the anxiety, H.F. resorts to a type of magic in order to find out more about the future. Magic is primarily the attempt at bringing about a state of affair that will be more congenial, beneficial and productive to the subject. It claims to manipulate surroundings to the will of its user. Such is the concept of magic that Defoe refers to in A System of Magick. Defoe criticizes and dismisses this view of magic, but it does not stop his fictional characters from trying to “speak into being” a version of events that will benefit them. Their control of information is much like a magic trick. Such ability does not stop them from feeling what one might call “dissonance” when they look back on their past decisions. If foreknowledge and a magical use of language seem to transform supernaturalism into plot devices structuring the conflicts of the narratives, supernaturalism also informs the emotional language of the narratives. The protagonists’ emotional responses both in anticipation under the impression of foreknowledge (that is, under their hindsight bias) and in the experience of dissonance and confusion in the face of their own stories is rendered in the

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language of wonder and awe, which rightly belong into the sphere of the marvelous. Certainty and confusion are indeed at the heart of the quest for knowledge. The contrast between the two describes the need to negotiate between bias and the sharing of new knowledge.

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