Keeping With the Trend: Defoe's Narrator, the Journalist

After reading Lennard Davis' Factual Fictions, I have a better understanding of Defoe's style in A Journal of the Plague Year. Last week, Liana brought up an interesting point regarding Defoe - the narrator is much like a journalist.

Defoe's narrator does not get emotionally involved with the stories he is telling. He simply presents them to the reader and lets him or her decided how to interpret them. Also, he gives detailed reports on the deaths, which is similar to something we would see in today's newspapers (an emphasis on hard facts and details). A Journal is full of anecdotal stories and other little details, which, when taken together, encompass the entire story as a whole. Last week, many of us raised concerns with regard to Defoe's style. His material is dense, hard to absorb, and we were having trouble reading into it. It's hard for us to read A Journal as a "novel" when we consider the other materials we've read as modern readers. It doesn't look like or feel like a "novel". However, Davis has given me a new appreciation for Defoe's style in A Journal. He outlines a history of the "novel," pointing to various origins of the word and what was considered entertainment and prose from the 16th century and beyond. What I found particularly interesting was the idea that novels developed from journalistic pieces, such as criminal histories and the like. If we can see Defoe's narrator as a journalist, I think we can look past the difficulties we are having as 21st century readers and have a much better appreciation for his style. After all, keeping what Davis has presented to us, Defoe's style appealed to the audiences of his time. What may seem boring and dry to the modern reader, was a fascinating page turner for the 18th century reader. I understand now why A Journal is written the way it is. We should keep in mind that Defoe wasn't thinking about his works surviving centuries to come - he was thinking only about his immediate time and what would appeal to his audience. The fact that it has survived to be read by us attests to the greatness of his narrative style.