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 lexicon of Literary Terms, Harry Shaw states, In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as real people. (1) looking at at Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders (2) and Aphra Behns Oroonoko (3) the reader will cause it difficult to make this definition conform to Moll and Behns narrator. This doesnt mean that Defoes and Behns work is ineffective, but there is therefore a difficulty it is the ingest of truth. Defoe in his preface states, The Author is here supposd to be writing her own History. (Moll Flanders, p. 1) and Behn claims, I was myself an eye-witness to a great 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 thereby that th eir characters are practical(prenominal), 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 fail to the earliest English novels. There 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 workings 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 someone experience (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 plump for section of this paper will show how far this is realized in both of the novels. In the third section I want to analyze the characters individuality in connection with the claim to truth and their complexity in description. 2 Realism Watt argues that the characters in a novel owe their ind ividuality to the realistic presentation. Realism is expressed by a rejection of traditional plots, by particularity, emphasis on the personality of the character, a consciousness of duration of time and space and its view in style. 2.1 Rejection of traditional plots Watt states that, Previous literary forms had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional practice the major test of truth .