DOCSLIB.ORG

Robinson Crusoe" Author(S): Roxann Wheeler Source: ELH , Winter, 1995, Vol

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Robinson Crusoe 'My Savage,' 'My Man': Racial Multiplicity in "Robinson Crusoe" Author(s): Roxann Wheeler Source: ELH , Winter, 1995, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 821-861 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30030104 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ELH This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Mon, 23 Nov 2020 03:46:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 'MY SAVAGE,' 'MY MAN': RACIAL MULTIPLICITY IN ROBINSON CRUSOE BY ROXANN WHEELER Although critics of Daniel Defoe's The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) have long been fascinated by Crusoe's and Friday's relationship, twentieth-century scholars have been slow to treat the dynamic of race that informs that relationship and the entire novel.' When race has been considered a significant category of inquiry, often the nuances of its meanings in the early eighteenth century have been neglected for a more contemporary paradigm of self and other or white man and native. My essay develops a different approach both to early eighteenth-century ideas about race and to Crusoe's various relationships with non-British men. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe exemplifies the way in which reading for racial multiplicity is better able to analyze race as an emergent, rather than rigid, concept in the early eighteenth century. That is, by reading for racial multiplicity in Robinson Crusoe, I argue not only that the color binary of black and white is an inadequate tool for understanding either the representation of race or colonial relations, but also that significant racialized categories other than skin color, such as "savage," "Christian," and "slave," complicate an understanding of race at this time. For example, focusing on a color binary is not sufficient to explain the juxtapositions of the British with other Europeans, Moors, West Afri- cans, or Native Caribbeans that characterize Robinson Crusoe. By studying the multiple meanings of race and color in this early eighteenth century text, I do not erase the hierarchies structuring colonial and racial relations, rather I register the complexity of their operation. This analysis of Robinson Crusoe and of its social text examines the novel's representation of racial multiplicity and its participation in contemporary eighteenth-century articulations of race and colonial power relations.2 First, I show the precision with which Robinson Crusoe defines the various boundaries between people in racialized terms. Then, I demonstrate that despite this, the novel has fostered confusion in its many subsequent interpretations. In fact, the novel's difficulty in situating Friday in a stable category of Carib, cannibal, or slave, is central to analyzing Robinson Crusoe.3 Such a difficulty reflects a larger cultural uncertainty about the significance of racial difference in the early ELH 62 (1995) 821-861 c 1995 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 821 This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Mon, 23 Nov 2020 03:46:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms eighteenth century. But first, I begin with a contemporary reading of Robinson Crusoe that shows the problems which arise when an analysis seeks to confine an eighteenth-century colonial text to a color binary informed by current notions of race. I In 1992, when Toni Morrison introduced Race-ing Justice, En- gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality and sought to make sense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's position in relation to racial politics in the United States, she chose an analogy to Robinson Crusoe.4 Morrison identifies Friday's relation to Crusoe as a particularly appropriate analogy for Thomas's relation to the Bush administration. For many social critics, including Morrison, Robinson Crusoe and Friday are paradigmatic of colonial relations between whites and non-whites.5 Yet, homogenizing race to a rigid set of binary differences divorces the literary from its social text and produces a narrative about racial relations in Robinson Crusoe that seems remarkably contemporary. Morrison's "Introduction: Friday on the Potomac" juxtaposes Clarence Thomas's Senate confirmation hearings to Robinson Crusoe. This ex- tended analogy to Friday and Morrison's critique of both Thomas and United States's politics are first introduced in her choice of epigraphs, which move from comments by Thomas and Anita Hill to the scene in which Friday bends his head to Crusoe's foot. Arguing that the signifi- cance of the hearings is, in part, "history," and suggesting that "the site of the exorcism of critical national issues was situated in the miasma of black life and inscribed on the bodies of black people," Morrison's essay deftly critiques the way that race is played out in the United States's national text, unveiling the structure of racial discrimination in which Thomas and Hill were placed.6 Morrison further argues that the Senate Judiciary Committee and the media coverage of the hearings situated the two main players on an historical binary depicting Africans in slavery: the "tom" (Clarence Thomas) and the "savage" (Anita Hill). Morrison's interpretation of the hearings and the aftermath was that they repre- sented a process "to reorder those signifying fictions ['natural servant' and 'savage demon']."'7 Not surprisingly, perhaps, these terms are the very terms in which Robinson Crusoe works out Friday's position. In Morrison's essay, the relationship between Crusoe and Friday functions as a myth of contemporary race relations, which, when compared to the novel, shows that Morrison has significantly changed the racial dynamics that the novel depicted in order to characterize 822 Racial Multiplicity in Crusoe This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Mon, 23 Nov 2020 03:46:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms modern race relations in the United States. Beginning the comparison between the present and the past, Morrison spotlights "Friday": On a Friday, Anita Hill graphically articulated points in her accusation of sexual misconduct. On the same Friday Clarence Thomas an- swered . those charges. And it was on a Friday in 1709 when Alexander Selkirk found an 'almost drowned Indian' on the shore of an island upon which he had been shipwrecked. Ten years later Selkirk's story would be immortalized by Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe.8 Morrison's version of the novel's origin is mistaken, but such a confusion, especially about Friday, has been part of the novel since its initial publication.9 First, Selkirk is a disputed, factual base for Defoe's novel; second, there were two separate instances of solitary individuals on Juan Fernandez island that Morrison's version conflates. One instance was indeed a Guyanese man, the Mosquito Indian Will, who was not shipwrecked but left behind accidentally in 1681; the other instance was a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk, who was not shipwrecked either but abandoned by his captain in 1704. Thus, Selkirk did not find an Indian, drowned or otherwise; Will had been reunited with another buccaneer ship in 1684. Transferring an Indian to Selkirk's narrative allows Morrison to replace Friday (an Amerindian) with a character she refers to as a "black," "savage," "cannibal" in her recollection of Friday in Robinson Crusoe. But Morrison has recalled a fiction of the fiction: There [in Defoe's novel] the Indian becomes a 'savage cannibal'- black, barbarous, stupid, servile, adoring.... Crusoe's narrative is a success story, one in which a socially, culturally, and biologically handicapped black man is civilized and Christianized-taught, in other words, to be like a white one.'0 On the contrary, in the novel, the "savage" is a Carib, an Amerindian attached to a group with specific customs, religious and social beliefs, and rules of governance; moreover, the novel carefully depicts Friday in a way that it refuses to depict the other "savages." I agree with Morrison, however, that Friday is taught to be like a white man, and a certain kind of white man-a servant. Yet, the extended analogy between Friday and Clarence Thomas significantly rewrites the original. Given Morrison's focus on Clarence Thomas, it is understandable that she revises the details of Robinson Crusoe in the process. However, part of my goal in analyzing racial multiplicity is to demonstrate the way that the Robinson Roxann Wheeler 823 This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Mon, 23 Nov 2020 03:46:18 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Crusoe myth predictably detached itself from eighteenth-century his- torical conditions in this instance. In her essay, Morrison misremembers not only Selkirk but also Robinson Crusoe, recalling an African Friday rather than a Caribbean Friday." Furthermore, in the novel, Friday is neither "black," "stupid," nor considered "biologically handicapped." Such stereotypical features are enabled by a peculiarly nineteenth-century racism and a North American, post-Civil Rights critique of the construction of race; they are also a measure of the power of black power to act as proxy for all other oppressed groups.12 Referring to Friday as a case study of internalized racism, Morrison observes that the interaction between Crusoe and Friday takes place on Crusoe's terms, not Friday's: "The problem of internalizing the master's tongue is the problem of the rescued." Commenting on Friday's assimi- lation into British culture, the loss of his "mother tongue," and the associated consequences for internalizing the norms of the master's language, Morrison concludes that "both men [Thomas and Friday] ..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe @300 Grant Glass Over 300 Years
    Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe @300 Grant Glass Over 300 years ago, Daniel Defoe immortalized the story of Robinson Crusoe with the publication of The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe—creating long tradition of stories about being marooned in an inhospitable place understood as the Robinsonade genre. While the intimate details of Crusoe’s story might be unfamiliar, many of its adaptations like The Martian or Cast Away still persist. Those are just a few, if you look closely enough, there are religious, survivalist, social gospel, colonizationist and anti-colonial, martially masculine, feminist Robinsonades, in overlapping circles emanating out from this central text. The best estimates place these variants in the hundreds. Yet the original novel provides the reader with a gauntlet of historical baggage ranging from colonialism and slavery to climate change and industrialization—forcing us to confront not only our past, but how we represent it in the present. What, then, is Crusoe’s legacy at 300, and what do its retellings tell us about how we think of our past and our future? When you start to notice the Robinsonade, it appears everywhere, and you start to realize you cannot put the horse back in the stable when it comes to Crusoe. Long before the days of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Lena Dunham, Crusoe became an international phenomenon on the star power of its writer, Daniel Defoe, who much like a prolific Tweeter, “seemed to have strong opinions about everything, and wrote about almost everything in his world and his time,”1 with topics ranging from economics, politics and history to space travel.2 While Defoe wrote over 500 books, pamphlets, addresses and letters in his lifetime, Crusoe became his most well-known and well-read work.3 Crusoe was a major hit right from its first printing, it was so well received that Defoe quickly produced a sequel within only a few months after publication of the first.
    [Show full text]
  • Robinson Crusoe
    READING GROUP GUIDE ROBINSON CRUSOE BY DANIEL DEFOE Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundatio- nal English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that recontextualizes the book for our globalized, post- colonial era. Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel. But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of coloni- zers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, unin- BUY FROM RESTLESS terrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or Paperback List Price: $19.99 ignored or silenced.” ISBN: 9781632061195 Publication: 8/27/19 Daniel Defoe (c. 1660 - 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained 5.5” x 8.25” • 384 pages enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest Fiction: Classics/ World Litera- ture / Caribbean/ Adventure/ practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain.
    [Show full text]
  • Polarity Dimensions in Cotzee's
    Polarity Dimensions in Cotzee’s Foe An Analysis of the Reality/Fantasy and Freedom/Captivity Dichotomies Dimensioner av polaritet i Coetzees Foe En analys av dikotomierna verklighet/fantasi och frihet/slaveri Raluka Adlander Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – Karlstad University Subject: English III for teaching in Secondary and Upper Secondary Education Points:15 credits Supervisor : Åke Bergvall Examniner: Johan Wijkmark Date: January 2019 Adlander Abstract This essay examines the literary reasoning behind employing antagonistic themes in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe. The emphasis of this analysis is on two of the most predilected of Coetzee’s topics and their antipodes – reality/ fantasy and freedom/ captivity – but references to secondary themes like feminism and colonialism are also included. Analysing dichotomies in Foe aims to demonstrate that a concept could be understood by its opposite and that the boundary between two antagonistic elements could be a matter of perception. Another intention of this analysis is to provide a plausible decoding of Coetzee’s intricate literary message in Foe. The complexity of this narration resides in its ambiguity generated by polarities and in the multitude of cryptic literary, historic and linguistic details, which are obscured to any superficial reader. To fathom the intended meaning in Foe implies a laborious study, and it requires a deep analysis of all its constituent elements. This essay only refers to a few of them and for that reason I consider that this essay should be regarded as a starting point to further in-depth studies concerning Foe. Keywords: Coetzee, dualism, authorship, truth, fiction, slavery, postmodern, paradox, Friday, castaway, desert island, self Sammanfattning Denna uppsats undersöker det litterära resonemanget bakom att använda antagonistiska teman i J.M.
    [Show full text]
  • Narratives of the Literary Island: European Poetics of the Social System After 1945
    Narratives of the Literary Island: European Poetics of the Social System after 1945 Ioana Andreescu Abstract In European post-war literature, the topos of the island takes centre stage, as the insular space often narrates a micro-scale society and the reconstruction of its social system. Isolation, semantically derived from ‘island’, characterises a European society radically transformed by the traumatic violence of the twentieth century. In this context, Robinson Crusoe—the ‘rational adult white man’—is recreated and reinvented in a multitude of new meanings, newly significant for understanding a transformed (and in-transformation) European society: he is cruel, he is afraid, he is a child, he is a woman, he is alone among others. The hypothesis of this paper is that the interest in and updating of Robinson Crusoe’s story transform this narrative into a literary myth, invested via intertextual and palimpsestic approaches with “a programme of truth” (Veyne 1983) that reveals a continuous interest in an alternative social system, which is in-the-making, historically, socially, psychologically, geopolitically, and so on. The literary post-war island narratives considered here, The Magus (1965) by John Fowles and Friday, or, the Other Island (1967) by Michel Tournier, highlight the process of the rewriting and rescaling of European history, as well as the essential need for human values in the creation of a society that has economics at its core. Keywords: Robinson Crusoe, myth, power, ideology, capitalism, individualism, palimpsest, postmodernism, postcolonialism Introduction This paper seeks to relate the myth of Robinson Crusoe and that of the desert island to modern European history, in order to apprehend several poetic1 functions of the post-1945 social system, particularly as portrayed in two post-war European novels, namely The Magus (1965) by John Fowles and Friday, or, the Other Island (1967) by Michel Tournier.
    [Show full text]
  • Construction in Robinson Crusoe from Post Colonialism
    Studies in Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2573-6434 (Print) ISSN 2573-6426 (Online) Vol. 2, No. 3, 2018 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/sll Original Paper Analyzing “Other” Construction in Robinson Crusoe from Post Colonialism Perspective Li Rui1 & Jiao Dan1* 1 Henan University of Technology, Henan, China * Jiao Dan, Henan University of Technology, Henan, China Received: July 31, 2018 Accepted: August 17, 2018 Online Published: August 24, 2018 doi:10.22158/sll.v2n3p195 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/sll.v2n3p195 This article was realized with the support of Henan Provincial Philosophy Scientific Planning Project 2015BYY014; Henan Provincial Key Scientific Research Project in Higher Education 17A880006z and Henan Provincial Educational Scientific Planning Key Project [2016]-JKGHA-0015. Abstract This paper uses the theory of post-colonialism to do research on “Robinson Crusoe”, taking the geographical environment (the desert island) and nation (Friday and Robinson) as examples, analyzes the construction of the other. And the characters analyzing reflects colonialism, which leads people to ponder. This paper is divided into four parts. The first part is introduction, in the first part, the author mainly introduces the background of “Robinson Crusoe”, the relevant post-colonialism theory, the theory of “others” proposed by Zhu Yuande (2007), as well as the current situation and purpose of the research. The second part is to analyze the two protagonists, Robinson and Friday, which reflects colonialism thought. The third part analyzes the construction of the other in “Robinson Crusoe” from two aspects: they are the geographical environment and the nation. The last part is conclusion. Keywords Robinson Crusoe, the other, post colonialism, construction, geographic and nation other 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Islands in the Screen: the Robinsonnade As Television Genre Des Îles À L’Écran : La Robinsonnade Comme Genre Télévisuel Paul Heyer
    Document generated on 09/24/2021 6:24 p.m. Cinémas Revue d'études cinématographiques Journal of Film Studies Islands in the Screen: The Robinsonnade as Television Genre Des îles à l’écran : la robinsonnade comme genre télévisuel Paul Heyer Fictions télévisuelles : approches esthétiques Article abstract Volume 23, Number 2-3, Spring 2013 The island survivor narrative, or robinsonnade, has emerged as a small but significant television genre over the past 50 years. The author considers its URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1015187ar origins as a literary genre and the screen adaptations that followed. Emphasis DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1015187ar is placed on how “island TV” employed a television aesthetic that ranged from an earlier conventional approach, using three cameras, studio locations, and See table of contents narrative resolution in each episode, to open-ended storylines employing a cinematic style that exploits the new generation of widescreen televisions, especially with the advent of HDTV. Two case studies centre the argument: Gilligan’s Island as an example of the former, more conventional aesthetic, and Publisher(s) Lost as an example of the new approach. Although both series became Cinémas exceedingly popular, other notable programs are considered, two of which involved Canadian production teams: Swiss Family Robinson and The Mysterious Island. Finally, connections are drawn between robinsonnades and ISSN the emerging post-apocalyptic genre as it has moved from cinema to television. 1181-6945 (print) 1705-6500 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Heyer, P. (2013). Islands in the Screen: The Robinsonnade as Television Genre. Cinémas, 23(2-3), 121–143.
    [Show full text]
  • The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe Title
    The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe Title: The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Author: Daniel Defoe CHAPTER I—START IN LIFE I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe; and so my companions always called me. I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me. Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
    [Show full text]
  • Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences ISSN 2347-5374 (Online) Sch
    Thinkwell Ngwenya.; Sch. J. Arts. Humanit. Soc. Sci. 2015; 3(2C):510-515 Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences ISSN 2347-5374 (Online) Sch. J. Arts Humanit. Soc. Sci. 2015; 3(2C):510-515 ISSN 2347-9493 (Print) ©Scholars Academic and Scientific Publishers (SAS Publishers) (An International Publisher for Academic and Scientific Resources) Circum Atlantic Space and Class Identity Formation and Transformation: The Case of The European, The African and The American in The English Novel Thinkwell Ngwenya Great Zimbabwe University, Faculty of Arts, Department of English and Media Studies, Masvingo, Zimbabwe *Corresponding Author: Thinkwell Ngwenya Email: [email protected] Abstract: The argument in this paper says identities are not given but they keep changing particularly in ―The New World‖ and this paper looks at English literature, Daniel Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Exquemelin‘s The Buccaneers of America. Defoe shows the new avenues and possibilities of self exploration offered by the New World. In this book the concept of identity will be discussed vis-à-vis the ship, the sea, and the island chronotopes. The contention being that these alternative spaces exert certain demands and expectations on individuals which make constant adjustments and metamorphosis inevitable for both Robinson Crusoe and Friday, his servant. Meanwhile, Alexander Exquemelin‘s portrays the Atlantic world with its connecting link, the ship as elastic space which can be exploited, manipulated, appropriated, and utilized for self creation, agency and subjectivity. Both Robinson Crusoe and The Buccaneers of America deal with the issue of economic subjectivity: i.e. the romanticized and idealized homo- economicus of Robinson Crusoe in his utopian island and the real world of conspiracy and piracy, extravagancy, debauchery, and waste of the buccaneers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Golden Age of Piracy Slideshow
    Golden Age of Piracy Golden Age of Piracy Buccaneering Age: 1650s - 1714 Buccaneers were early Privateers up to the end of the War of Spanish Succession Bases: Jamaica and Tortuga – Morgan, Kidd, Dampier THE GOLDEN AGE: 1715 to 1725 Leftovers from the war with no employment The age of history’s most famous pirates What makes it a Golden Age? 1. A time when democratic rebels thieves assumed sea power (through denial of the sea) over the four largest naval powers in the world - Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands 2. A true democracy • The only pure democracy in the Western World at the time • Captains are elected at a council of war • All had equal representation • Some ships went through 13 capts in 2 yrs • Capt had authority only in time of battle • Crews voted on where the ship went and what it did • Crews shared profit equally • Real social & political revolutionaries Pirate or Privateer? •Privateers were licensed by a government in times of war to attack and enemy’s commercial shipping – the license was called a Letter of Marque •The crew/owner kept a portion of what they captured, the government also got a share •Best way to make war at sea with a limited naval force •With a Letter of Marque you couldn’t be hanged as a pirate Letter of Marque for William Dampier in the St. George October 13, 1702 The National Archives of the UK http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhisto ry/journeys/voyage_html/docs/marque_stgeorge.htm (Transcript in Slide 57) The end of the War of Spanish Succession = the end of Privateering • Since 1701
    [Show full text]
  • IO0083-Castaway1.Pdf
    Inside Out Castaway WORKSHEET A 1. Quickly read through the story narrated by Alexander Selkirk. Then answer the questions on Worksheet B. I was born in Largo, Scotland, in 1676. My father was a tanner – he made clothes and other items from leather – and a cobbler (a shoemaker). Many people said that I was a “difficult person. Maybe they were right, I never had much patience with fools. In 1695 I became a sailor. I was a good seaman and worked my way up to the position of sailing master quickly. In 1705, I was appointed Master of the ship Cinque Ports, one of two vessels under the overall command of William Dampier. We were privateers, pirates who had the blessing of our government to attack Spanish ships off the South American coast and steal gold, silk and jewels. We weren’t paid a wage - whatever we stole, we kept. Although Dampier was a good navigator and mapmaker, he clearly had no idea how to run a privateering expedition. By the time we had crossed the Atlantic and reached Brazil, many men were hungry and sick. Worse still, we already had cases of scurvy (the fatal illness caused by lack of vitamins) aboard. Despite the condition of the men, we were ordered to make our way around Cape Horn, a most treacherous stretch of water, south of Chile. We finally made it, although the ship was badly damaged. When we put in at Mas a Tierra, an island in the Juan Fernandez chain, four hundred miles off the coast of Chile, I had a big argument with the captain of my ship, Thomas Stradling.
    [Show full text]
  • “Castaways in the Very Heart of the City” ] ————————————————— Island and Metropolis in J.M
    “Castaways in the Very Heart of the City” ] ————————————————— Island and Metropolis in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe MARION FRIES–DIECKMANN Topography and the narrative HE MOST STRIKING DIFFERENCE between Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its postmodern retelling Foe (1986) by T J.M. Coetzee is the female first-person narrator and protagonist Susan Barton, who is marooned on the island. There she meets Cruso – who obviously had suffered the same fate as her years before – and his servant Friday. In contrast to their literary predecessor, Coetzee’s Cruso is a rather inert atheist, and Coetzee’s Friday an obedient but uncommitted servant. The fourth important character in Coetzee’s novel is the writer Daniel Foe, whom Susan Barton turns to, after her rescue from the island, as soon as she is back in London. She wants him to write her story of the island. Yet there are a number of obstacles she is faced with, and thus the ‘writability’ of her story becomes the central topic of the novel. The key to her story is Friday, whom she takes back with her after Cruso’s death on the island. He does not – or cannot – speak, owing to an alleged mutilation of the tongue. Thus, he repre- sents a “hole in the narrative”1 throughout the novel. As a result, Susan’s story remains untold and unwritten. The reader gains the impression that Susan’s story is the Urtext of Robinson Crusoe,2 as Susan and Foe discuss precisely those modifications which would bring Susan’s story and Defoe’s novel in line.
    [Show full text]
  • Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 14 (2012) Issue 3 Article 9 Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe Geert Vandermeersche Ghent University Ronald Soetaert Ghent University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Vandermeersche, Geert; and Soetaert, Ronald. "Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.3 (2012): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2043> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.
    [Show full text]