Defoe, in fact, often shows a surprising interest in the occult or grotesque for one who is supposedly forging the realistic novel in English. In spite of the realistic foundations of the work, however, its imaginative-not to say fantastic- elements outweigh its realism. In A Journal of the Plague Year, he also refers frequently to the mortality list, drawing on actual documents of the time to give his narrative a sense of reality. A Journal of the Plague Yearĭefoe himself lived through one siege of the plague, and although he was only five years old when the disease swept through London, he presumably would have retained some recollections of this catastrophic event, even if only through conversations he would have heard among family members. Purporting to be a journal, one man’s view of a period in a city’s history, this work shows especially well the nexus between realistic reporting and imaginative invention that is the hallmark of Defoe’s novels. Although A Journal of the Plague Year is not Daniel Defoe’s first work of fiction, it offers an interesting perspective from which to examine all of the author’s novels.
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