Maximillian E. Novak's Books

Daniel Defoe

Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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Daniel Defoe

Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas

By: Maximillian E. Novak

Daniel Defoe led an exciting and indeed precarious life. A provocative pamphleteer and journalist, a spy and double agent, a revolutionary and a dreamer, he was variously hunted by mobs with murderous intent and treated as a celebrity by the most powerful leaders of the country. Imprisoned many times, pilloried and reviled by his enemies, through it all he managed to produce some of the most significant literature of the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions is the first biography to view Defoe's complex life through the angle of vision that is most important to us as modern readers--his career as a writer. Maximillian Novak, a leading authority on Defoe, ranges from the writer's earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour, to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death. Novak illuminates such works as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, novels that changed the course of fiction in their time and have remained towering classics to this day. And he reveals a writer who was a superb observer of his times--an age of dramatic historical, political, and social change. Indeed, through his many pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction, Defoe commented on everything from birth control to the price of coal, and from flying machines to the dangers of the plague. Beautifully and authoritatively written, this is the first serious, full-scale biography of Defoe to appear in a decade. It gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that lie behind some of the great works of English literature.

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Page Count

780

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199261547

ISBN 13

9780199261543

Daniel Defoe

Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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Daniel Defoe

Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas

By: Maximillian E. Novak

Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times. Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented onanything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to academies for women, from security for the aged to the dangers of the plague. In his fiction he created a type of vivid realism that powerfully influenced the development of the novel. The publication of workssuch as Robinson Crusoe are major events because they shape the ways in which we see our world, so that ever afterwards thoughts of desolation and desert islands immediately evoke Defoe's masterpiece. We should not be surprised: Defoe always wrote to make things happen. During his career as anauthor, he was a provocative pamphleteer, journalist, and poet; but when he was not writing, he was, at times, a spy and a double agent, a revolutionary and a dreamer. He was variously hunted by mobs with murderous intent and treated as a celebrity by the most powerful leaders of the country.Imprisoned four times or more, pilloried and reviled by his enemies, through it all he never lost confidence in his ability as a writer and thinker. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions is the first biography to view Defoe's complex life through the angle of vision that is most important to us as modern readers--his career as a writer. From his earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour,to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death, Defoe was pre-eminently a creator of fictions. This life gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that went into such great works as Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana.

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Page Count

786

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198126867

ISBN 13

9780198126867

Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives

Finding The Thing Itself

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives

Finding The Thing Itself

By: Maximillian E. Novak

This book explores significant problems in the fiction of Daniel Defoe. Maximillian E. Novak investigates a number of elements in Defoe’s work by probing his interest in rendering of reality (what Defoe called “the Thing itself”). Novak examines Defoe’s interest in the relationship between prose fiction and painting, as well as the various ways in which Defoe’s woks were read by contemporaries and by those novelists who attempted to imitate and comment upon his Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe decades after its publication. In this book, Novak attempts to consider the uniqueness and imaginativeness of various aspects of Defoe’s writings including his way of evoking the seeming inability of language to describe a vivid scene or moments of overwhelming emotion, his attraction to the fiction of islands and utopias, his gradual development of the concepts surrounding Crusoe’s cave, his fascination with the horrors of cannibalism, and some of the ways he attempted to defend his work and serious fiction in general. Most of all, Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives establishes the complexity and originality of Defoe as a writer of fiction.

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Page Count

251

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611494869

ISBN 13

9781611494860

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

By: Maximillian E. Novak

William Congreve was deeply involved in the events of his turbulent times. That involvement reveals itself in works which have sometimes been regarded as entirely unengaged with the realities of his society. This book attempts to read Congreve’s plays and his novella, Incognita, against the political and social upheaval of the period initiated by the rebellion of 1688. A strong supporter of the new world ushered in by William III and Mary, Congreve fought against the reactionary politics of the Jacobite opposition.

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146

Publisher

Anthem Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1785273736

ISBN 13

9781785273735

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

By: Maximillian E. Novak

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146

Publisher

Anthem Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1785273736

ISBN 13

9781785273735

Book's by Maximillian E. Novak

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives

Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve

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