Daniel Defoe is a deliberately provocative teacher, psychological dialectic and narrative contraries dominating his expository writing. A calculating presence in his ‘fictional’ and ‘non-fictional’ texts conveys the integration of his artistry and morality. If he lied about the authenticity of his storytelling and if he seems to condemn himself by insisting that telling one lie to correct another promotes rather than remedies vice, he cared for consistency as a literary theorist only in so far as thoughtfulness helped him move readers and audiences by rhetorical creativity. He often dared to be unsystematic about the writer’s role; if he advances pulpit oratory to authors, he also urges that writers must pass beyond the bounds of priestly decorum in reproving moral corruption. Hence his fictions present neither utopian culture or philosophical realism. He aimed to stabilize and refine the public realm by exploiting narrative themes diversely so as to convey humane understanding of society’s necessities.