Defoe and Fictional Time

Defoe and Fictional Time shows Defoes relevance to issues now central to criticism of the novel; relationships between narrative time and clock time, the influence of time concepts shared by writers and their audience, and above all the questions of how fiction shapes the phenomenal time of reading. Paul K. Alkon offers first a study of time in Defoes fiction, with glances at Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne; and second a theoretical discussion of time in fiction. Arguing that eighteenth-century views of history account for the strange chronologies in Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, and Roxana, Alkon explores Defoes innovative use of narrative sequences, frequency, spatial form, chronology, settings, tempo, and the readers cumulative memories of a text. Defoes Journal of the Plague Year is the first portrayal of a public durationpassing time shared by an entire population during a crisisranking Defoe among the most creative writers who have explored the way in which fictional time may influence reading time.