Topographies of the Imagination : New Approaches to Daniel Defoe

Topographies of the Imagination traces not only the diverse contours of Defoe's creative intellect but also the ways in which general readers, literary critics, and even editors have interpreted and fashioned multiple Defoes across time and space. To study and write on the works of Defoe is to recognize at once his significance and elusiveness, the importance of his body of works and the evolving nature of his canon. In this collection, Defoe inspires scholars to think meta-biographically and meta-textually even as they appreciate Defoe's life and work on their own terms, a task that necessitates inhabiting a complex and sometimes paradoxical critical space, one that resists simple interpretive binaries. This collection is something of a microcosm of what the most recent decades of scholarship in Defoe studies represent: the upsurge of a wide variety of theoretical and critical approaches to the life and writings of Defoe, which has led to the exploration of many previously unexamined aspects of his works and to the interrogation of standard interpretations of his texts.