在《瘟疫年紀事》這部堪稱"虛構/真實"典范的作品中,笛福從歷史文獻、統計數據中獲取相關事實,在此基礎上展開虛構想象,重現了1665年倫敦瘟疫中的世間萬相。這個創作過程由多重投射組成,即歷史真相在虛構敘事中的投射、集體想象在真實生活中的投射、個人感知在社會共識中的投射以及社會公共性在個人主體性中的投射。而這些投射也正是小說承載的歷史與當下、個人與他者、個人與社會多重關系的具體體現。有關瘟疫的真實性書寫也由此融入了"虛構/真實"以及"個人主體性與社會公共性"的彼此建構過程中。

A Journal of the Plague Year is the example for the fiction/authenticity writing. Daniel Defoe was engaged in the imagination on the basis of the related facts gathered from historical literature, statistics, etc., with the purpose of representing the whole picture of society stranded in the London Plague of 1665. His writing consists of multiple projections, namely, the projection of historical truth in the fictional narrative, the projection of collective imagination in the real life, the projection of personal understanding in public consensus, and the projection of social publicness in personal subjectivity, which are the concrete representations of the concerned multiple relationships. Thus, the authenticity writing of this book is integrated into the interactive construction between fiction and authenticity, personal subjectivity and social publicness.