The Incidental Cavalier: Re-reading Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier

Abstract

The article revisits a relatively neglected novel in the Defoe canon, Memoirs of a Cavalier. It argues that whilst the Cavalier's political affiliations were certainly not accidental, they could be said to be incidental. And, moreover, that this was a deliberate strategy on the part of the author, designed to undercut any simpler political or cultural affinities which might be found elsewhere in myriad similar “memorials” published in the early years of the eighteenth-century. In short, Defoe presents his readers with a Cavalier who is anything but cavalier. The article first revisits Defoe's literary politics, in order to contextualize the Memoirs, before proceeding to re-read the narrative itself. More closely still it explores the extent to which the narrative realizes the particular aspiration stated in its Preface, to “correct” Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. It closes reflectively, wondering about the possibility that the Cavalier somehow ended up fighting on the wrong side, and perhaps writing on it too.

Keywords

• memoirs of a cavalier
• clarendon
• gustavus adolphus
• king charles i
• marvell