Scholars today deem Robinson Crusoe the first British novel. Defoe's construction of Crusoe as the atypical British traveler asserts his collective subjectivity within the framework of intimate personal experiences, accentuating his individualism. Yet, as scholars of Orientalism and Transatlantic theory can attest, calling Robinson Crusoe the first novel provides problematic methodologies that arise from affiliating the novel form to a structure associated the British colonialism and fashioning a "superior" British subject. In this essay, I work to emphasize the hybridity present within the novel, utilize historical context to provide a voice to marginalized Indigenous Americans to show how the format relies upon a relationship between collectivism and individualism, assert Indigenous voices matter in the novel, and analyze the relationship of a new collectivism that arises from narratives that cross into American spaces.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137645 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Kunasek, Caleb John |
| Contributors | Calcaterra, Angela, Hinton, Anna, Garofalo, Devin |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Kunasek, Caleb John, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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