Lennard Davis's chapter "Factual Fictions" lends some interesting insights into how a novel like Defoe's could be conceived of, and I think it also lends some clues to our difficulty in connecting with Defoe's narrative.
In our last class, we talked about how our expectations as modern novel readers affects the way we reacted to Defoe's Journal. I will even go so far as to propose that it is the expectations of the audience that, in part, shapes the style of narrative. As a postmodern 21st-century readers, I expect emotional, confessional material within the novel. What I interpret as Defoe's detachment is initally somewhat shocking. I expect H.F. to be more personally affected by the plague, perhaps through a family member's sickness, and to react to the plague much more emotionally than in his rather journalistic style of narration. There seems to be a lack of connection between the narrator and the events he is narrating. Why would I expect this? Because the vast majority of novels created for popular consumption today offer this emotionalism to the reader. It is what I expect, and not finding it in Defoe's work feels initially like being tricked, as though the title and the subject matter had prepared me for a certain type of narration which wasn't delivered.
But perhaps we interpreting Defoe's narrative through an inappropriate paradigm. I make this suggestion after ready what is implicitly expressed in Davis's chapter. Davis makes a connection between the expectations of the audience and the content of the "newes and novels" created for them. The audience craves new, titilating, exciting "newes," hence the controversy surrounding whether or not something was "true" and the efforts that creators of ballads and newes went to to assure their audience of the authenticity of their pieces. Doesn't Defoe do the same thing? Above all, he strives to surround H.F.'s narrative with authenticity and plausibility. Therefore, while Defoe may report the more sensational events that occurred during the plague, we noted in class that he always careful to be skeptical of such events, even though the very presence of H.F.'s skepticism heightens our belief in what he reports.
In other words, it is not Defoe's narrative that is deficient but perhaps that our expectations are different. We turn to novels for entertainment, excitement, or a sort of emotional experience (experienced perhaps by proxy through the narrator), whereas Defoe's audience may have turned to "newes" and novels for a sense of authenticity and continuity, such as Davis mentions in "Factual Fictions."
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Defoe and postmodern expectations
Monday, February 5, 2007
Ballads and Broadsides
In preparation for our next class on Defoe, when we'll also be reading Davis' chapters from Factual Fictions, please take the time to read over in more detail the plague ballad we examined briefly in class:
"A Recollection of the Times: or, Englands Looking-Glass"
The Davis chapters are available on Blackboard, under course documents/"origins of the novel."
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A lack of empathy in a Journal
Also in agreement with Alana’s post, I cannot connect with Defoe’s writing in the same way as I connected with Behn’s. I chalk this up to writing style: I find his longwinded, clause-filled sentence structure to be distracting. Defoe’s thoughts seem to be all over the place; his narrative is disjointed.
Laura, I also see myself as a romantic reader. I was very excited when I saw this book on the reading list. I hadn’t read it, but I imagined it to be a sort of cross between Stephen King’s The Stand, the Resident Evil game/movie, and Joss Whedon’s Firefly series (regarding the Reavers, for those of you familiar with the plot.) Well, I was mistaken. Journal of the Plague Year, while certainly about an apocalyptic disease, lacks the emotional impact and complexity of the other works I’ve mentioned. (Can you tell I’m addicted to Pop Culture?) This book should have been harrowing and unforgettable, but instead I found it ponderous and difficult to absorb. I found myself reading a few pages, then having to go back and re-read, as nothing had sunken in.
I wonder if the emotional disconnect I feel from Defoe’s work is due to his methodical approach in writing. His style is almost journalistic in nature, except for the constant interjections of personal (dry and cumbersome) thought. Defoe’s voice is distracting, as is his seeming lack of empathy for those suffering around him. The main character seems cold to me; more concerned with possessions and economic goings on than the suffering and death surrounding him. While I applaud Defoe’s desire to chronicle the devastating events of the plague, I think his effort is strangely indifferent to the very thing he is trying to chronicle.
Sorry for the negativity, let me know your thoughts!
Poem: "Journal of the Plague Year"
Ploughshares, Spring 2006 v32 i1 p73(1)
"A Journal of the Plague Year" by Ben Lerner
We would walk with it into the open
Look down and read the shadows
Of the clouds passing over it
The birds sang dial tones
The infected birds
Gray sentences uncurled
As we smoked our manuscripts
The cattle went mad
Their blue lips smiling
At a sign in the distance
We slaughtered the distance
It was not given us
The magic of numbers
We who slept in swaying
Towers underground
Defoe: Novak: Innovator of Fictional form
I must say that I agree with almost everybody else about The Journal of the Plague Year. Defoe was not particularly captivating or engaging to me. However, I did appreciate his sense of accuracy in describing environments, as I felt that I could hear the sounds he heard and feel the things he felt. Yet, at the same time, his obsession with detail frustrated me and almost lost me early in the work.
However, I chose to examine Defoe's work in light of Max Novak's essay "Defoe as an innovator of fictional form." Novak points out that Defoe seems to achieve his purpose of describing the years of the plague in London in a way that was not just purely entertaining and that sucked the gravity of the situation in London at the time out of the story. He postulates that Defoe wrote to adequately portray the city of London in those years of plague. I found this to be particularly true, at least in my opinion. I feel like Defoe used his narrator H. F to show us the city in a way that was descriptive in deep depth as well as plausible and almost realistic. By this I mean that - as Novak points out - Defoe writes about the scene in which certain women raid his brother's warehouse, and amidst the disease and plague indulge themselves in trying on the hats in the room. So, as a reader I felt like this was a brief comic relief, if I might call it that. In essence, while it is apparent that Defoe is using his narrator H. F to tell of the calamities of 1665 London, he does it in a way that provides the reader an expansive view of the events of the Plague including the acts that might be considered too ordinary to attract attention in view of the death and dying taking place. I will say that I was engrossed by Behn's Oroonoko as well as Haywood's Fantomina. Defoe was markedly different to me. This was mainly because he described in too much detail things that I did not particularly care too much about and his story was not of a bright and sunny event. However, I still managed to be able to appreciate his writing style and can see why Novak refers to him as "innovator of fictional form." I see Defoe, at least in relation to the two other authors we have read, as a slight departure from the romantic style, with its fanciful descriptions and common themes to the narration of an event that is ugly and unappealing. I think he performed the task well in that he succeeded in entertaining his readers as well as enlightening them. I think that this might be why Novak sees A Journal of the Plague Year as the first historical fiction. He also tells his story using detail that a reader might not see as useful or just as burdensome, which brings the story closer to everydayness, as numerous events are always taking place around us at any given time, though we might not pay as much attention as Defoe's narrators do to the intrinsic details. His plot also contains some events that I think the story can do without; yet he tells them. I can see how he finds that necessary because life is actually full of such details. In drawing the curtain to a close, I did not really enjoy the reading but I do appreciate Defoe's style.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
The Writing Parallels the Illness
The writing style and plot seemed to parallel the coming and going symptoms of the plague. Not just the physical (body) signs of the illness, but the psychological and geographical signs as well.
The jumping back and forth in time, in setting and internally for H.F. was fascinating and tiresome throughout this reading. However, I can manage to accept that Defoe's intent was well established with his number lists and ever-changing character decision of whether to venture out on the streets of London or stay indoors.
Emotionally speaking, I found this novel to be depressing not because of the death aspect as much as because of the illness aspect: illness of the mind, spirit and population in the face of a bio-threat such as the Plague.
God, can you help me - H.F.'s struggle for survival
I agree with Alana's post in that I am not finding Defoe to be as exciting a read as Behn. That said, I think his writing should be commended by us 21st century readers. After reading the first half of this narrative, I feel as though I've traveled back to London during the time of the plague.
Defoe has painted a vivid picture for me. Although A Journal is fictional and lacking in certain areas, I nonetheless am able to take myself back to the 17th century. As unbelieveable as it may sound to some of you, I see people scurrying to leave town, I hear the cries of those whose family and friends are dying around them. (Perhaps, I am too much of a romantic reader, wanting to get myself lost in each and every book that I read.) As H.F. walks down a London street, noting the drastic changes in scenery, he says: "... the Voice of Mourning was truly heard in the Streets; the shriecks of Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of their Houses, where their dearest Relations were, perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard" (18). It is phrases such as these that enable me, as a reader, to feel the fear and desperation of the people. This sense of entrapment and fear of never returning to normalcy are what lead me to understand why God appears so frequently throughout A Journal. To answer Alana's question, I do not see A Journal as a testimony to God's mercy. Rather, I see H. F.'s trust in God as an individual reaction to a catastrophic event. I don't believe that he suggested that everyone should trust in God as a means to survive. Instead, he turned to God to help guide him through his decision to stay in London. I'm sure every person dealt with the plague in their own way. After all, his brother preferred to leave town and he was in good company. H.F. chose to stay, for it was "the Will of Heaven" that he not go (12). On the other hand, one could argue that he was forced to stay due to his own fault - he was unable to get a horse and his servant left him before he embarked on the journey. The bottom line is that it is hard for us to correlate God, mercy, and the plague in the same sentence. With so many lives lost, it does make the reader wonder how H. F. survived the epidemic. Was it pure luck or Divine intervention?