Defoe and postmodern expectations

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."