Defoe's Writings and Manliness

'Stephen Gregg's fine study recovers the full range of attitudes and sources that fed Defoe's complex vision of masculinity and delivers one of the more unflinching examinations of Defoe's unnerving ability to get mileage out of contradiction and perversity. This is a highly welcome contribution to the gradually growing canon of books about Defoe and gender.' Wolfram Schmidgen, Washington University, USA 'Stephen H. Gregg has written a timely and much-needed study of Daniel Defoe... By the end of the study a reader feels that he or she has been in the company of a scholar steeped in the work of Daniel Defoe. ... Gregg has offered us a breath-taking and comprehensice grasp of Defoe [...] and the very complexity of his argument means that it will be able to shape our thinking about Defoe for some time to come.' Digital Defoe 'In showing the varieties of manliness that Defoe engages in his writings, Gregg has broadened our understanding of both Defoe and the intricacies of eighteenth-century maleness in some provocative and persuasive ways. This well-written study is shrewd in its assessments, theoretically sophisticated, and wide-ranging in its use of literary and cultural evidence.' Eighteenth-Century Fiction 'Sketching a broad canvas beyond Defoe's texts, Gregg demonstrates eloquently that 'manliness is shaped by the intermittent tensions and fitful syntheses between a variety of contrary forces in Defoe's writings: between, for example, commerce and civic humanism; Christian and Classical virtue; patriarchy and companionate marriage; gentility and gentlemanliness; or between private friendship and public spirit'.' Notes and Queries