“No better than a FIB:” Daniel Defoe’s Snubbing of the British Myths in His Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1727)

When Daniel Defoe wrote his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain his main aims were on the one hand to provide an account of his travels through his country, both factual and constructed from his research; and on the other to promote a state of opinion favorable to the Union of Scotland and England (1707). Defoe’s extensive chorography of the new political entity, Great Britain, focuses on its modernity, sustained on its flourishing commerce and political stability. Defoe’s empirical and practical stance leads him to reject any reliance on myth or legend in his vivid urban and countryside descriptions. His references to King Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea or Brutus of Troy, among others, are not favorable; yet Defoe admits these myths’ continuation as cornerstones—which they are even to our day—in the Britons’ narrative of Britain’s superiority. Such references to various myths and legends are also made to criticise the credulity of the common people, and to highlight, by force of contrast, the increasing dominance of Defoe’s modern Britain in the European and global scene, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. My paper therefore analyses Defoe’s captious use of Britain’s mythical past to reinforce his belief in his nation’s confident present and promising future as a model to other nations.