The Friendly Daemon, or the Generous Apparition (Annotated)

In The Friendly Daemon, or the Generous Apparition, Daniel Defoe adapts the machinery of supernatural narrative to the purposes of moral instruction and social satire. The apparition is less a vehicle for terror than a benevolent, destabilizing presence whose interventions expose human folly, credulity, avarice, and misplaced confidence in worldly appearances. Combining colloquial prose, anecdotal...