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 and through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as genuine people. (1) Looking at Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders (2) and Aphra Behns Oroonoko (3) the reader will find it difficult to make this definition conform to Moll and Behns narrator. This doesnt mean that Defoes and Behns work is ineffective, only when there is indeed a difficulty it is the claim of truth. Defoe in his insert 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 means in this history, the hero himself, (...) (Oroonoko, 75) Although both authors claim their stories atomic number 18 true, and thereby that their characters are realistic, there seems to be a gap between the authors claims and the reality of the characterization. This disbelief is closely connected to the fact that both smarts belong to the earliest side of meat tonics. 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 works neglect a certain roundness in their narrators. The main characteristic of the unsanded literary form of the novel according to Ian double-u is truth to man-to-man experience (4) and its new shape is created by a focus on the individual character. He is presented in a specific definition of sentence and space. The second section of this paper will show how far this is complete in both of the novels. In the third section I privation to analyze the characters individualism in connection with the claim to truth and their complexness in description. 2 Realism Watt argue s that the characters in a novel owe their individuality to the realistic presentation. Realism is expressed by a rejection of handed-down plots, by particularity, emphasis on the personality of the character, a sense of duration of time and space and its expression 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 .