Defoe’s Minutes of Mesnager: The Art of Mendacity
P. N. Furbank, Open University
Volume 16, no. 1, October 2003
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ABSTRACT
One of Defoe’s most ingenious fictions is his Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager at the Court of England. It was published by S. Baker in June 17171 and purported to come from the pen of Nicolas Mesnager, who came incognito to England in August 1711 as an agent of Louis XIV to help formulate the “Preliminaries” to a peace treaty, and who subsequently acted as one of the three French plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Utrecht.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Daniel Defoe” include:
“A Life of Continu’d Variety”: Crime, Readers, and the Structure of Defoe’s Moll Flanders
by KATE LOVEMAN (ECF 26.1, Fall 2013)
Real Robinson Crusoe
by MICHAEL GAVIN (ECF 25.2, Winter 2012-13)
“Zealous for Their Own Way of Worship”: Defoe, Monarchy, and Religious Toleration during the War of the Quadruple Alliance
by MORGAN STRAWN (ECF 25.2, Winter 2012-13)
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