Prefaces to the novel: Robinson Crusoe and novelistic form

Abstract

In its early history the novel frequently deploys paratextual material to orient generic expectations, and in particular to navigate the often complex relation between the real and the fictional. Defoe's prefaces to the three instalments of the story of Robinson Crusoe map out an increasingly tortured attempt to puzzle out the world-forming quality of the novel and thus to construct a kind of proto-theory of novelistic form. Seeking both to claim the historical truth of the narrative and to deal with the consequences of the fact that that claim is untrue, these paratextual materials seek to reconcile novelistic invention with the revealed religious truth that stands above it.