ABSTRACT
Non-conformist writing moves beyond these more familiar sites of literary expression to focus on the religious perspective and identity of writers whose primary experience is largely characterised by civil persecution and uncertainty about the future. What is immediately apparent when comparing his writing with that of earlier non-conformists is Daniel Defoe’s relative emotional distance towards many of the issues which concerned his predecessors. With a few notable exceptions – including Thomas DeLaune and Abraham Gill – Defoe generally refrains from naming non-conformists who suffered during the post-Restoration period. It would be too simplistic to assert that such individuals were universally lauded across the dissenting community as martyrs to the cause of religious integrity. The informing discourses of religious debate in Defoe’s earlier works tend to be broadly described rather than examined closely by most modern scholarship.
