Questions of Appearances in Roxana

In contrast to Humphry Clinker, in which appearances appear not to be so important (even if, as we have shown, there are some important questions opened by them), Defoe's Roxana (The Fortunate Mistress) could be said to depend strongly (or to be based?) on a series of questions of appearances. But, before we start looking at some cases (evidence), I'm going to propose a double 'game,' a double inscription: to see how the appearances that appear in Roxana 'fit' or can be fitted into some dictionary definitions of related terms such as "appearances," "appear," "apparitions." In Humphry Clinker, I tried to create a typology of appearances, to distinguish features, for the very first time; a typology as if dictated by the novel, or open to what I could find. Here, I would try to be more 'precise', define a little bit 'better' the terms in play or put them like in more precise 'compartments', catalogued. ('Precise' and 'better' only in inverted comas because of a certain scepticism of mine, that makes me wonder if it'll be actually better or more precise. In that sense, from the start, I believe the game is going to reveal some of its limitations, such as the possibility of perfect definitions, of complete assurance of meaning, of divisions, that one thing can mean only one (another) thing and no (two or more) other (what, certainly, seems to be the case sometimes, but dangerous to make a rule out of it); a revelation that could be taken as a gain rather than as the inevitable failure of my game. The game could also give us a different approach, open up new categories or possibilities, to think questions of appearances in the eighteenth-century novel; possibilities that later on could be further opened up or explored in relation to some other philosophical issues, in relation to some philosophers, some philosophical texts.

I would take for reference the New Oxford American Dictionary and The New Collins Concise Dictionary, not because of their particular authority (in relation to other dictionaries) but only because they're readily available to me right now. In any case, I'm interested in the wordings, in the 'materiality' (the actual words) of the different meanings of certain words, and not that much in finding their most precise or authoritative definition. I'm more interested in use, than in norm. Certainly, I would be checking some other dictionaries as well, in the future, as if to confirm what I have found here, in these two, but mainly looking for other possible meanings or degrees of meaning (subtle possibilities to widen up the spectrum, get more 'tools', as if to be more precise?), that could appear 'in' other wordings, even if they seem to point towards a meanings already taken into account. But for the moment these two would serve me as a point of departure.