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H.F.'s Meditations: A Journal of the Plague Year

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Everett Zimmerman
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Abstract

Much of the detail in Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year is derived from historical sources, but the focus of the book is on the internal conflicts of the narrator. This focus is achieved by several means: (1) H.F. structures his account around! s repentance of the decision to remain in London; (2) he frequently comments on his not entirely successful attempts to comprehend the nature of morality in a time of plague; (3) he uses many biblical references to suggest spiritual interpretations of physical reality. Instead of directing the spiritual meanings of his narrative primarily outward toward the reader for a didactic purpose, Defoe used these meanings to create a psychologically complex and interesting central character. The morally disorienting forces of the plague expose the tensions within the narrator, and we see his conflicts and mounting anxiety. This focus on the narrator makes A Journal of the Plague Year something more like a novel than like either history or the seventeenth-century pious writings that lie in its background.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , May 1972 , pp. 417 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 “Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year Reconsidered,” RES, 16 (1965), 172.

2 For a discussion of the Puritan view of reality and history, see J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe'-Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), esp. Ch. v, “Metaphor, Type, Emblem, and the Pilgrim 'Allegory.' ”

3 Hunter suggests that the Journal should be read “in relation to the providence and diary traditions” (p. 204). It also contains elements of the “Guide” tradition. G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, N. J. : Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), also deals with background relevant to this work.

4 P. 94. All references are to the Shakespeare Head Edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1928).

5 See Rodney M. Baine, Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1968), pp. 6–7, 9–11, for a discussion of Defoe, bibliomancy, and A Journal of the Plague Year. Baine gives an interpretation of the Journal differing from the one in this paper. He believes that Defoe generally accepted bibliomancy, and sees no irony in Defoe's treatment of H.F.'s decision.

6 In considering the causes of the plague, H.F. adopts the usual Puritan view of God's interventions in His providentially ordered universe: God uses natural means to accomplish something beyond the ordinary course of nature. This is a “special providence” and differs from a “miracle” because it does not set aside the laws of nature. Some

Puritans thought that miracles ceased after biblical times. For a full discussion, see Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1939), esp. pp. 226–28.

7 The Reluctant Pilgrim, pp. 100–01. See the entire discussion, pp. 99–102.

8 An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (“Author's Preface,” 1706; 1st American ed., Philadelphia: Barrington and Haswell, 1828), I, 281.

9 “Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year Reconsidered,” p. 170.

10 See Starr's chapter on Moll Flanders in Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography for a discussion of “the classic process of hardening” (p. 134).

11 It seems clear that at times Defoe had a detached and even ironic attitude toward his narrator; at other times H.F.'s uncertainties may reflect Defoe's own anxieties. Although the question of Defoe's relationship to his narrator cannot be given a definitive answer, the coherence of the book can, nevertheless, be seen

12 Two important works that deal with the Journal have appeared subsequent to my writing of this paper: A Journal of the Plague Year, ed. Louis Landa (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969); George Starr, Defoe and Casuistry (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971).