ABSTRACT
At the age of sixteen Daniel Defoe was placed by his father in a Dissenters’ academy. The intention was that he should take the necessary five-year course that would qualify him to become a minister. Adolescence, the period in Defoe’s life when we learn of his religious struggles and doubts, is, psychoanalysis postulates, the second, not the first, phase in the evolution of our sexuality, for our psychosexual development is diaphasic. Everything points to the two works, Religious Courtship and Moll Flanders, having been conceived simultaneously; not even Defoe at his most prolific could have completed Religious Courtship, so challenging and lengthy a work. He was probably writing both at the same time. The Preacher could only dare to permit his lustful feminine imagination to soar, to revel in his anti-heroines, to enjoy vicariously their anti-social frolicking and manipulations, by putting in place a total disavowal of their irresponsible lasciviousness; Religious Courtship was that magnificent disavowal.
