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Commercial paper, commercial fiction: 'The Compleat English Tradesman' and Defoe's reluctant novels.

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From: Criticism
Date: 19950622
Author:Sherman, Sandra

Daniel Defoe used the discourse of the marketplace in his novel 'The Compleat Tradesman.' At the time the novel was written, accounting practice was well-established as the Truthsayer in the marketplace and that the transparency of the accounting text assures the reader/creditor that it represents the real. However, Defoe demonstrates in his novel that commercial textuality, affiliated with credit, is not perfect in its representation of the real. This is the trope of his fiction. He showed how texts resist disclosure. Thus the author, creator of fiction, must not be held accountable for the ...

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