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The Colonial Subject in the Early British Novel: Revisiting Colonial Captivity in "Robinson Crusoe"

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137645
Date05 1900
CreatorsKunasek, Caleb John
ContributorsCalcaterra, Angela, Hinton, Anna, Garofalo, Devin
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Kunasek, Caleb John, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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