SOURCE: Langford, Larry L. “Retelling Moll's Story: The Editor's Preface to Moll Flanders.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 22, no. 3 (fall 1992): 164-79.

In the following essay, Langford discusses how the editor's preface to Moll Flanders should affect the reading of the novel.

Who is speaking me? Am I a phantom too? To what order do I belong? And you: who are you?

J. M. Coetzee, Foe

I.

Since Ian Watt declared Moll Flanders an ironic object but not a work of irony (130), criticism of the novel has largely focused on Defoe's attitude toward Moll and her story, and on the corresponding attitude he supposedly wished his readers to adopt. Few dispute the fact that the novel is full of ironies, but whether Defoe actually has a premeditated ironic perspective on Moll and her adventures has been repeatedly debated. The result of this debate has been the continual recasting of...