Images of the Moral Order: (Im)Morality and Redemption in Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The article starts from investigating the human preoccupation with the role and importance of divine providence through the centuries, with special emphasis on eighteenth-century English images of providence and divine authority, while observing the way in which the old tradition of magic and providential action was, during the same century, gradually overcome by the influence of Christian precepts and beliefs. Eighteenth-century England does not appear, at first sight, as a particularly religious age. Yet, religious themes pervade almost all the novels of the period, focusing on issues of mor... Mehr ...