Daniel Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier; or A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England. From the Years 1632 to 1648

Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Domains

Military

Dates

First circulation or publication 1720

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Historical
Novel

Resources

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Recommended Reading

The essence of Daniel Defoe’s

Memoirs of a Cavalier

is captured by its subtitle:

A Military History of the Wars in Germany and the Wars in England, from 1632 to 1648

. It follows an anonymous but individuated hero through a bipartite military career, including major battles in the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. Given this historical setting it has been considered a precocious historical novel (Backscheider 1986) nearly a century before Sir Walter Scott’s

Waverley

(1814). Otherwise, it has been questioned whether the titular character is sufficiently developed or the narration sufficiently complex to consider the

Memoirs

as anything more than a patchy chronicle with a fictional hero (Boardman 1983). “Novel” is a retrospective classification, one which Defoe would not…

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2261 words

Citation: Seager, Nicholas. "Memoirs of a Cavalier; or A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England. From the Years 1632 to 1648". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21937, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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