Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the tale of a castaway turning his misfortune into a great enterprise, has become more than a famous novel; it has found its place among our cultural heritage. This paper will deal with certain interpretations of the novel that regard the protagonist Crusoe as a classic example of homo economicus, focus on a concept of work that is supposed to underline what is called dignity of labour and construct Crusoe’s island life as an ideal state of natural existence. All these concepts of interpretation that were applied to Defoe’s novel during time share, as conceived here, certain colonial connotations, which are also emphasised by Defoe’s concept of the native colonial subject Friday. Therefore, Defoe’s novel can still be read as a prototype of colonial fiction, mirroring the ideological concerns of the Western imagery on the ‘New World’.
On attempt to deconstruct colonial fiction is the intertextual rereading of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe by the South African author J.M. Coetzee in his novel Foe. Coetzee’s work itself is here conceived as an attempt to deconstruct the colonial myth that has been implicitly or explicitly attached to the figure of Robinson Crusoe and his story. In regard to Coetzee’s reconception of the English classic the concepts that are illustrated and examined in the first part of this paper, in context of Defoe’s original, will be revised in terms of appropriation of space in colonial fiction, the figure of Crusoe and Friday and the question of the telling of colonial history.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and its Colonial Connotations
2.1 Colonial Space: The Myth of Nature
2.2 Labour, Economic Man and the Colony
2.3 Friday: The Legitimized Slave
3. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe and the Postcolonial Deconstruction of the Robinson Myth
3.1 Island Spaces and Colonial Appropriation in Robinson Crusoe and Foe
3.2 Crusoe and Cruso: The Colonizer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
3.3 Friday and Friday: The Colonial and Postcolonial Portrait of the Slave
3.4 The Telling of Colonial History in Foe
4. Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This paper examines how J.M. Coetzee’s novel "Foe" serves as a postcolonial deconstruction of the ideological and colonial myths embedded within Daniel Defoe’s "Robinson Crusoe."
- The interpretation of Crusoe as an archetype of "homo economicus."
- The concept of the "dignity of labour" as a justification for colonial expansion.
- The representation of the "native" as a legitimised colonial subject.
- The sterility and futility of colonial appropriation depicted in Coetzee’s work.
- The role of silence and narrative voice in the telling of colonial history.
Excerpt from the Book
2.1 Colonial Space: The Myth of Nature
A first and famous theme that has been attached to Robinson Crusoe is what Ian Watt describes with the term ‘Back to Nature’. Especially in the early modern age this term described a favourable idea of “varied forms of primitivism, of revulsion from the contemporary complexities of civilization into a simpler and more ‘natural’ order” (Watt 97f.). At a first glance Crusoe on his desert island seems to serve as a perfect example of such a retreat from the civilized world back into a more natural state of life. Especially the French philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau credited Defoe’s novel, which he counted among the few books that he would recommend at all, as a book that “supplies the happiest introduction to natural education” (cited after Rogers 52). To him Crusoe is the archetype of man outside society, which he appreciated as a kind of natural state of man and the “surest way of rising above prejudice and ordering one’s opinions according to the real relations of things” (cited after Rogers 53).
In this sense the shipwrecked Crusoe is regarded as a genuine example of solitary man in nature, serving as an example for the unprejudiced education of Rousseau’s fictive pupil Émile. According to Rousseau’s idea of radical individualism (Cf. Watt 98) Crusoe experiences the natural state of human life, characterized both by a retreat into untouched nature and by being cut loose from technology and complex economic structures. However, Defoe’s original novel seems not to support this notion. Crusoe’s return to nature is not that of an unbiased man adapting his life to the natural order of things, instead “Defoe’s ‘nature’ appeals not for adoration but for exploitation” (Watt 100). Defoe’s novel and conviction is “fundamentally anti-primitivist” (Watt 101). In fact Crusoe lands on his island involuntary, but soon remembers the very concept of taking care of uninhabited and unattained land as it was common to him and his time, namely the concept of colonialism. In this sense Crusoe takes care of ‘his’ island, making it his ‘kingdom’.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: Presents the paper’s goal to analyse the colonial connotations in "Robinson Crusoe" and their subsequent deconstruction in J.M. Coetzee’s "Foe."
2. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and its Colonial Connotations: Explores the mythological status of Crusoe as a prototype of Western modernity, focusing on themes of nature, economic man, and slavery.
3. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe and the Postcolonial Deconstruction of the Robinson Myth: Investigates how Coetzee reinterprets Defoe’s narrative to expose the failures and inherent violence of the colonial enterprise.
4. Conclusion: Summarises how "Foe" functions as a post-modernist reconstruction of British classical literature from the perspective of the colonised.
Keywords
Robinson Crusoe, Foe, J.M. Coetzee, Daniel Defoe, Postcolonialism, Colonialism, Homo Economicus, Island Myth, Labour, Slavery, Narrative Voice, Deconstruction, Appropriation of Space, Western Modernity, Cultural Heritage
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fundamental focus of this paper?
The paper explores the colonial ideology embedded in Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and how J.M. Coetzee’s novel "Foe" critically deconstructs these themes.
What are the central thematic fields discussed?
The discussion revolves around colonial appropriation, the "Robinson myth," economic individualism, the representation of the slave, and the politics of storytelling.
What is the primary objective of the study?
The goal is to demonstrate how Coetzee uses intertextuality to challenge the "canonical" colonial narrative of the solitary, industrious European master.
Which scientific methodology is applied?
The author employs literary analysis and a postcolonial reading to compare the original 18th-century text with a 20th-century critical rewriting.
What is the subject of the main part of the paper?
The main section analyses specific motifs like "Back to Nature," the "dignity of labour," and the contrast between Crusoe’s and Cruso’s approaches to the island space.
Which keywords best characterise the work?
The key terms include Postcolonialism, Colonialism, Homo Economicus, Deconstruction, and the Robinson Myth.
How does Coetzee’s depiction of Friday differ from Defoe’s?
While Defoe’s Friday is a willing servant and symbol of a successful colonial subject, Coetzee’s Friday is a tongueless, Black African victim of colonial violence whose silence speaks to his subjugation.
Why does the author argue that Cruso is a failure as a colonialist?
Unlike the productive and optimistic Crusoe, Cruso is depicted as a man suffering from insanity and sterility, failing to transform the island into a fruitful colony, which reflects the failure of the colonial myth itself.
- Quote paper
- Marc Alexander Amlinger (Author), 2005, Daniel Defoe’s "Robinson Crusoe" and J.M. Coetzee’s "Foe": Colonial Imagination and its Postcolonial Deconstruction , Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/120711
