The transformations of the novelistic canon: The comparison of Daniel Defoe’s and Penelope Aubin’s dedication to truth and virtue
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Date
2014
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
The aim of the article is to discuss the evolution of the concept of the literary canon in the context
of eighteenth-century fiction. The concept of the literary canon has been traditionally associated
with timeless, universal values which transcend the ideological conditions of the period in which
texts are created. In present criticism, which is shaped by cultural studies, the association of a
canon with universality has been challenged. A canon has been recognised by cultural critics as
an instrument of an ideological power struggle which presents the values of dominant social
groups as universal. The analysis of novels written by Penelope Aubin and Daniel Defoe at the
beginning of the eighteenth century demonstrates that the study of literature only from an
ideological viewpoint does not account for the workings of the literary canon. Both Aubin and
Defoe employ the same formula of fiction, adventure story with a moral commentary, but while
Defoe's fiction has survived in literary histories, Aubin's stories, after their initial success, fell into
oblivion and have been rediscovered only recently by feminist critics. The varying fates of
Aubin's and Defoe's fiction point to the insufficiency of the definition of canon which binds
literary value too strongly with ideology.
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Keywords
canon, eighteenth-century fiction, ideology, cultural studies, Aubin
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 49.4 (2014), pp. 55-62