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Defoe, Dissent, and Typology

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Defoe, Dissent, and Typology DEFOE, DISSENT, AND TYPOLOGY by Andrew McKendry A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (August, 2013) Copyright ©Andrew McKendry, 2013 Abstract This dissertation investigates how Dissenting writers, among them Samuel Annesley and Richard Baxter, influenced the religious thought of Daniel Defoe. Though some critics, most notably G. A. Starr and J. Paul Hunter, have positioned Defoe within a broad “Puritan” tradition, his religious ideas are more properly understood within the specific circumstances of post- Restoration England, as the unique pressures engendered by the Interregnum impelled many Dissenting writers to privilege “Practical Religion” over abstract theology. The aversion to “doubtfull disputations” that Defoe inherits from this discourse informs not only the modes of argument Defoe employs, but also the genres through which he engages with theological questions. Throughout his writing, however, his attachment to Biblical typology, which is informed by his dependence on the Bible as a stable locus of indisputable “plainness,” comes into conflict with his political tenets, as Scripture provides no firm precedent for the mode of contractual kingship introduced by the Glorious Revolution. At first seeking to mute the incongruities between “Hebrew times” and “modern” circumstances, Defoe is eventually impelled to reconceptualise typology, formulating a theory that both acknowledges the authority of the Bible while allowing William, and the mode of contractual kingship he represents, to surpass Scriptural types. This attitude towards typology fundamentally underpins the narrative of Robinson Crusoe (1719), which systematically repudiates Biblical narratives. Rather than adhering to prefigurative Biblical patterns, the novel is built on a series of divergences, first personal and then political, from Scriptural models. Anchored in his specific geographic and economic circumstances, Crusoe’s conversion is markedly distanced from Biblical types, represented as a process unique to his situation, rather than an iteration of an existing pattern. Ultimately, this dissertation contends that Defoe’s religious thought, specifically his commitment ii to “Practical Religion” and the typological hermeneutic this discourse underpins, is fundamentally informed by his relationship with post-Restoration Dissent. iii Acknowledgements In the development of this dissertation I have accrued more debts than perhaps even Defoe himself. The thoughtful guidance and meticulous commentary of my supervisor, Dr. F. P. Lock, has contributed substantially to the rigour of my scholarship and the quality of my writing. Dr. Christopher Fanning, who acted as my second reader, has provided invaluable support throughout this long process, and his astute critiques have helped me clarify the links between the different aspects of my argument. I should also acknowledge the advice of Dr. Leslie Ritchie and Dr. Glenn Willmott, who tolerated many unannounced visits. The generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada substantially facilitated and enriched my research. My work at Queen’s University was funded by a Joseph-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, and a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement enabled me to undertake important research in the United Kingdom. This archival study was also made possible by a Dean’s Travel Grant awarded by Queen’s University. I am significantly indebted to Dr. John Coffey, who acted as my host supervisor during my time in England, as well as to Dr. David Wykes, director of Dr. Williams’s Library, who provided guidance on the Evans List as well as advice on my treatment of Nonconformity. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the unflagging support of my fiancée Heather, who has read through this dissertation more times than I can count. iv Table of Contents Abstract...................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..........iv Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2: A “Sober, Industrious, Trading” People? English Protestant Dissent, 1662-1731………………………………………….………………….……21 Chapter 3: Defoe, Dissent, and the Discourse of “Practical Religion”……………………...66 Chapter 4: “A New Turn to the Text”: Typological Conflict, Adaptation, and Alteration….128 Chapter 5: “Making Very Free with the Holy Scriptures”: Robinson Crusoe and the Disruption of Typology………………………………………………………………170 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………217 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………..224 v Chapter 1: Introduction Follow him by the scent of his scraps of scripture, and you’ll find him at Salter’s, or Pinner’s-Hall… Anonymous, The Shortest-Way…with its Author’s… Name Expos’d, his Practices Detected… (1703). In early April of 1705, Daniel Defoe received a letter from his friend John Fransham, a Norwich linen-draper and fellow Dissenter, updating him on the local popularity of his new satire The Consolidator, a story of a lunar society that paralleled that of England (Letters 83). Defoe responded a few weeks later, expressing his pleasure that his new work was well received. This success, he wrote, is the Token for good to me that the work I am upon is of him whose immediate hand by wonderful steps have led me through the Wilderness of Troubles… This is the glory of his infinite Wisdom that brings to pass the great ends appointed by his foreknowledge by the agency of us his most despicable Instruments and the interposition of the minutest Circumstances. To him be all the praise both of his own work and our little, little, very little share in it, and let the success of his service encourage all the Lovers of Truth to stand up for the Lord against the Mighty, who knows but now is the day of our deliverance. (84-85) For those familiar with the pragmatic, materialistic mentality on display in Defoe’s novels and economic tracts, this is an unexpected tone; the passage sounds more like Bunyan than Defoe. The language and phraseology reveal an extensive knowledge of Scripture, not only featuring numerous Biblical images but also following a trajectory anchored in the Old Testament. Perhaps we might assume that Defoe, more concerned with profits than piety, is only putting on a show of religion for his friend. But what is significant about this passage is that it is not, in essence, particularly exceptional. On the contrary, this Biblical language is typical of Defoe. His writing comprehends thousands of Biblical allusions, drawn from nearly every book of Scripture. Whatever his topic – trade, politics, history – his thought is rooted in the Bible. As Valentine Cunningham observes, “his ideolect is intensely Biblical” (349). Certainly, we cannot perfectly measure the depth and sincerity of his faith. But we can profitably study, across thirty years of his writing, the contexts, characteristics, and development of his religious attitudes and ideas. This dissertation undertakes one aspect of this endeavour, contending that Defoe’s religious thought, specifically his commitment to “Practical Religion” and the typological hermeneutic this discourse underpins, is fundamentally informed by his relationship with post- Restoration Dissent. The conventional image of Defoe paints him as an unprincipled, worldly man whose mindset was fundamentally secular and mercantile. This view is underpinned by a constellation of interrelated assumptions about the eighteenth century, about the development of the novel, and about the relationship between author and text. While we might trace this perspective back to the eighteenth century itself, when literary and political opponents blasted Defoe as a “monster” and a mercenary “hypocrite,” its modern manifestation is rooted in the work of twentieth-century biographers, who were inclined to see Defoe as an unprincipled dissembler, especially after the legal details of his 1692 bankruptcy were investigated by James Sutherland in 1933 (Lockhart 229; Judas Discuver’d 3; Sutherland, “Troubles” 275-290). Moreover, as scholarship focused more sharply on his political writing, the uncertainty of his allegiances (now largely vindicated) came under fire and “his image as a pious and zealous reformer, misused by his own generation, was rapidly redrawn into that of an unscrupulous hack” (Hunter, Pilgrim xi; Guilhamet 12). For critics, Defoe’s unscrupulousness and “duplicity” fit only too well with his fictional characters, which substantiated the image of him as “an essentially unreligious rationalist” driven from his faith by his allegiance to reason – a portrait that fit Defoe neatly into a Whig history of the period (Stamm 227-241). The religious aspects and arguments of his writing, critics argued, were nothing more than “conventional, if economically inexpensive, tributes” (Andersen 46). This conception of Defoe was widely 2 disseminated and popularized in literary criticism by Ian Watt, who argued, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), that all of Defoe’s characters, Crusoe and Moll especially, were “embodiment[s] of economic individualism” driven by “the fundamental tendency of economic individualism” (68). As Watt’s book had an impact far beyond Defoe studies, it disseminated and popularized an image of Defoe as an essentially secular thinker who gave only lip-service to religious matters – what Defoe
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