On this date in 1703 Daniel Defoe was placed in the pillory for seditious libel, but was pelted with flowers instead of garbage.

Frye in The Secular Scripture:

When the novel was established in the eighteenth century, it came to a public familiar with the conventions of prose romance.  It is clear that the novel was a realistic displacement of romance, and had few structural features peculiar to itself.  Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Pamela, use much the same general structure as romance, but adapt that structure to a greater demand for greater conformity to ordinary experience.  This displacement gave the novel’s relation to romance, as I suggested a moment ago, a strong element of parody.  It would hardly be too much to say that, realistic fiction from Defoe to Henry James, is, when we look at it as a form of narrative technique, essentially parody-romance.  (CW , 79)