Comparing Defoes Moll Flanders and Aphra Behns Oroonoko :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Credibility and Realism in Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders and Aphra Behns Oroonoko In the Dictionary of literary Terms, Harry Shaw states, In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, engender so credible that they exist for the reader as real people. (1) feel at Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders (2) and Aphra Behns Oroonoko (3) the reader will find it difficult to actualize this definition conform to Moll and Behns narrator. This doesnt mean that Defoes and Behns work is ineffective, but thither is indeed a difficulty it is the claim of truth. Defoe in his preface states, The creator is here supposd to be writing her own History. (Moll Flanders, p. 1) and Behn claims, I was myself an eye-witness to a long part, of what you will find here set down, and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, (...) (Oroonoko, 75) Although both authors claim their stories are true, and at that plac eby that their characters are realistic, there seems to be a gap between the authors claims and the reality of the characterization. This question is closely connected to the fact that both novels belong to the earliest English novels. at that place was no fixed tradition that the authors worked in instead the novel was in the process of being established. The question arises whether the two works lack a certain roundness in their narrators. The main characteristic of the new literary form of the novel according to Ian Watt is truth to undivided realise (4) and its new shape is created by a focus on the individual character. He is presented in a specific definition of time and space. The countenance section of this paper will show how far this is realized in both of the novels. In the third section I want to go the characters individualism in connection with the claim to truth and their complexity in description. 2 Realism Watt argues that the characters in a novel owe their i ndividuality to the realistic presentation. Realism is expressed by a rejection of tralatitious plots, by particularity, emphasis on the personality of the character, a consciousness of duration of time and space and its expression in style. 2.1 Rejection of traditional plots Watt states that, precedent literary forms had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional suffice the major test of truth .