The Elusive Daniel Defoe (Critical Studies Series)

This psychological portrait of England's first great novelist advances the argument that the peculiar ambivalence that characterizes Defoe's writing resulted from an instability caused by his own contradictory drives. Laura Curtis highlights the themes that predominate in Defoe's writing: the attempts to carve a simple and immobile world out of fluid external reality; the conflict between the need for security and the longing for adventure; the constant intertwining of comedy and nightmare; the use of 'doubles,' personae and disguise.