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Defoe's poetic reformation: from poem to novel, from pillory to penitentiary.

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From: CLIO
Date: 20060322
Author:Oliver, Kathleen M.

In early July 1703, Daniel Defoe stood trial at the Old Bailey, accused of seditious libel. The indictment charged him with "practicing and purposing to make and Cause discord" between Queen Anne and her subjects through publication of a "Certain criminal document, a Seditious, pernicious and Diabolical Libel" entitled The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Defoe's parody of High Church antipathetic rhetoric against Dissenters. (1) Yet, parody or not, this relatively small pamphlet angered Anglicans and Dissenters alike, as it articulated all too well High Church sentiment towards ...

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