View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OTHES DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit “Robinson Crusoe Goes Postcolonial: Re-Writings of the Crusoe Myth by Derek Walcott and J.M. Coetzee“ Verfasserin Verena Schörkhuber angestrebter akademischer Grad Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. phil.) Wien, 2009 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 190 344 347 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch Betreuerin / Betreuer: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margarete Rubik Declaration of Authenticity I confirm to have conceived and written this paper in English all by myself. Quotations from sources are all clearly marked and acknowledged in the bibliographical references either in the footnotes or within the text. Any ideas borrowed and/or passages paraphrased from the works of other authors are truthfully acknowledged and identified in the footnotes. Signature _________________________ Hinweis Diese Diplomarbeit hat nachgewiesen, dass die betreffende Kandidatin oder der betreffende Kandidat befähigt ist, wissenschaftliche Themen selbstständig sowie inhaltlich und methodisch vertretbar zu bearbeiten. Da die Korrekturen der/des Beurteilenden nicht eingetragen sind und das Gutachten nicht beiliegt, ist daher nicht erkenntlich, mit welcher Note diese Arbeit abgeschlossen wurde. Das Spektrum reicht von sehr gut bis genügend. Es wird gebeten, diesen Hinweis bei der Lektüre zu beachten. Für meine Großeltern, Die mir immer wieder ein Lächeln auf die Lippen zaubern. For my grandparents, For always succeeding in making me smile. Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents for always being there for me and for having given me all the support I needed in order to focus solely on my studies. I am also infinitely grateful to my grandparents and brothers; without their unfailing support and belief in me I could not have come this far. I am especially indebted to my supervisor, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margarete Rubik, whose support during the whole writing process was invaluable. Her comments on the drafts of this work were always insightful, thorough and very helpful. Throughout the writing of this thesis, I have benefited from her perspective and constructive criticism, which helped me to shape my text and sharpen my argument. Of course, this thesis could not have been completed without the support of my friends. They include: Veronika Hübner, Claudia Sein, Golriz Gilak and Carina Pollak, for constantly listening to and sharing my thoughts whilst writing this thesis; my Erasmus friends Stefania Basset, Morven Campbell, Laura Comley, Irina Manea, Pierre Nicolle, Kaylee Stewart and David Wong, for widening my perspective; my former English teacher Siegi Witzany-Durda, for sparking my love for the English language; and James Wood, for being a most patient proofreader. I would also like to thank Robert Grubhofer, Brita Heidenreich, Matthias Helmreich, Dieter Huber, Katarina Jurik, Katharina Prinz, Raphaela Rohrhofer, Manuela Wagner, the Schulgemeinschaft Stiftsgymnasium Seitenstetten and my tutoring students, whose help has made me the person I am today, both on a private and professional level. Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………...… 1 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: THE POLITICS OF RE-READING AND RE-WRITING ………………………………………………………...…. 9 2.1 EDWARD SAID’S CONTRAPUNTAL READING METHOD ……………. 9 2.2 ‘THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK’: POSTCOLONIAL AND FEMINIST RE- WRITINGS OF THE CANON ……………………………………………..... 12 3. RE-READING DANIEL DEFOE’S ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719) ……….... 20 3.1 DEFOE AND THE BRITISH IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY …………………… 20 3.1.1 BRITISH COLONIALIST POLITICS AND THE RISE OF BRITISH IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY ……………………………………………… 20 3.1.2 ROBINSON CRUSOE AS ‘ENERGYZING MYTH’ OF ENGLISH IMPERIALISM ……………………………………………………….. 22 3.1.3 THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK AS INSPIRATION FOR THE CRUSOE MYTH ………………………… 24 3.1.4 THE APPROPRIATION OF THE SELKIRK STORY FOR ADVOCATING THE COMMERCIAL AND IMPERIAL ENTERPRISE …………………………………………………………. 26 3.2 THE IMPERIALIST AND COLONIALIST ASPECTS OF ROBINSON CRUSOE - A COLONIAL MYTH ………………………………………….. 29 3.2.1 THE REPRESENTATION OF IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM ………………………………………………………. 33 3.2.2 THE REPRESENTATION AND IMAGES OF THE OTHER ……….. 36 3.2.3 THE POLITICS OF FORM …………………………………………… 36 3.3 THE REPRESENTATION OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN THE COLONIAL TEXT ………………………………………………………….. 45 3.3.1 THE ADVENTURE NARRATIVE AND ITS IMAGINING OF MASCULINITY ………………………………………………………. 45 3.3.2 THE FLEETING PRESENCE OF FEMALE FIGURES IN ROBINSON CRUSOE ………………………………………………………………. 46 3.3.3 ROBINSON CRUSOE – ‘A CASE HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUAL REPRESSION’? ……………………………………………………..... 50 3.3.4 THE TAMING AND COLONISATION OF ‘VIRGIN’ LAND ……... 51 4. RE-WRITING ROBINSON CRUSOE FROM THE CARIBBEAN: DEREK WALCOTT’S PANTOMIME (1978) ……………………………….. 55 4.1 DEREK WALCOTT AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE ……………. 55 4.1.1 DEREK WALCOTT: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY ………………………. 55 4.1.2 LOCATING WALCOTT IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE ………………………………………………………… 57 4.2 PANTOMIME ……………………………………………………………….. 61 4.2.1 INTRODUCTORY REMARK AND PRODUCTION HISTORY …… 61 4.2.2 THE USES AND MISUSES OF LANGUAGE ………………………. 63 4.2.3 CARIBBEAN IDENTITY AND ITS THEATRICAL EXPRESSION .. 69 4.2.4 RE-WRITING THE MASTER-SLAVE DIALECTIC ……………….. 74 4.2.5 THE GENDER SUBPLOT AS ‘CONFESSIONAL PSYCHODRAMA’ …………………………………………………… 83 5. RE-WRITING ROBINSON CRUSOE FROM SOUTH AFRICA: J.M. COETZEE’S FOE (1986) ………………………………………………... 87 5.1 J.M. COETZEE AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE …………………. 87 5.1.1 J.M. COETZEE: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY ……………………………. 87 5.1.2 LOCATING COETZEE IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE ………………………………………………………… 89 5.2 FOE ………………………………………………………………………….. 93 5.2.1 INTRODUCTORY REMARK AND RECEPTION ………………….. 93 5.2.2 WORK, RELIGION AND SOCIETY ………………………………… 95 5.2.3 THE POLITICS OF AUTHORSHIP AND GENDER ………………... 101 5.2.4 THE COLONIAL OTHER ……………………………………………. 108 5.2.5 FOE AS A POSTCOLONIAL UTOPIA ……………………………… 117 6. CONCLUSION: A COMPARISON ………………………………………….. 123 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………….. 137 INDEX ………………………………………………………………………………. 161 GERMAN ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………… 164 1. Introduction “Mr Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with ROBINSON CRUSOE?” I answered that I had read ROBINSON CRUSOE when I was a child. “Not since then?” inquired Betteredge. “Not since then.” […] “He has not read ROBINSON CRUSOE since he was a child,” said Betteredge, speaking to himself – not to me. “Let’s try how ROBINSON CRUSOE strikes him now!” (Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 378-379) It is a fact universally acknowledged that Daniel Defoe’s literary classic Robinson Crusoe, published on April 25th, 1719,1 has attained the status of a myth. As Ian Watt has remarked in an essay in 1951, “Robinson Crusoe falls almost naturally into place, not with other novels, but with the great myths of Western civilization, with Faust, Don Juan and Don Quixote”2 (Watt, “Myth”, 95). Originating from Greek ‘mythos’, denoting ‘word’ and ‘speech’, myths are “stories shared by a group that are a part of their cultural identity” (Gill 2). As it is synonymous with ‘logos’, which appears in the original Greek for the Biblical passage “in the beginning was the Word” (“En arche en ho logos”, John 1:1), there has always been a close association between the potent word ‘logos’ and the often misunderstood word ‘mythos’.3 According to Paul Veyne, in Did the Greeks Believe In Their Myths? (1988), “[m]yth is truthful, but figuratively so. It is not historical truth mixed with lies; it is a high philosophical teaching that is entirely true, on the condition that, instead of taking it literally, one sees in it an allegory” (Veyne 62, cited in Waugh and Wilkinson 237; emphasis added). Readers may wonder why I decided to write a thesis entitled “Robinson Crusoe” Goes Postcolonial: Re-Writings of the Crusoe Myth by Derek Walcott and J.M. Coetzee. It is precisely the words of the kindly butler, Mr. Betteridge, uttered “with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe” (Collins 379), in Wilkie Collins’ detective novel The Moonstone, cited as an epigraph to this chapter, that puts 1 Cf. Fitzgerald 183. Unless indicated otherwise, all subsequent references to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (hereafter cited parenthetically as RC) refer exclusively to The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Written by Himself (1719). Its sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), and the later, probably separately conceived, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), will not be considered here; as noted by Downie (“Contexts”, 14-15), Robinson Crusoe has increasingly come to denote the first part only, if not the island episode itself. 2 Robinson Crusoe has become a powerful myth widely known in the whole Western world. So popular was Crusoe that “in [1920s] France a large umbrella [was] still called un robinson” (Ellis, Twentieth, iii). 3 Cf. Gill 2. 1 my personal interest in Defoe’s novel into a nutshell: “Let’s try how ROBINSON CRUSOE strikes him now!” Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was amongst my favourite (and also amongst the first) books I read as a child, and I remember how I admired its eponymous hero for surviving against all odds, and succeeding in re-creating English civilisation on a desert island out of next to nothing. However, re-reading the novel now as an adult, I was struck, or rather shocked to recognise the many ideologies surrounding racism