Such strategic whitewashing certainly makes sense in terms of Defoe's
prefatorial claim that he wishes to encourage contemporaries to build more charity schools in order to help miserable street children like his protagonist.
Accompanied by
prefatorial blurb from other authors acclaimed for their nonfictional works, such as Gloria Emerson, which infer that the narratives enclosed within are consequently presented to the reader as something diametrically opposed to fiction.
The
prefatorial matter ends with three poems, signed by Philalethes (lover of truth), Philomathes (lover of knowledge), and Favour B, all perhaps written by Speght herself.
One can arguably read all of Book I as
prefatorial pattern-setting for the extended climax, Xerxes' invasion.
It is therefore essential to look into the comparative structures found in the plays with eyes unbiased by the links conventionally acknowledged between Shaw's dramatic texts and his
prefatorial works.
All this is not only suggested by the narrator's parodic
prefatorial history of Saddle Meadow, in which the monumentalization of the Glendinning name and of the "house" (and the American nation) is mocked by way of his focusing on the multitudinous contradictions between the historical past and the present that disrupts the "theogonic" continuity of the Origin so crucial, according to Nietzsche and Foucault, to monumental history.
(11) In "O mares sur la terre," the
prefatorial piece which opens La Diane francaise (December 1944), Aragon discusses the reasons for the defeat of France, alluding to the Resistance in these terms:
The resultant complex literary structure, reproduced in the present edition, is described in Nicholas Cronk's General Editor's
prefatorial section as analogous, toutes proportions gardees, to Diderot's Le Fils naturel with its accompanying Entretiens.
(5) The chapter is labeled a
prefatorial "wedge" or xiezi and titled as follows in all editions: Narrating the xiezi, the overall meaning is set forth; Through a famous man, the entire work is summarized.