Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

– intertextuality. He rewrites the story of Robinson Crusoe.

RC – written from a strictly colonial perspective, from a perspective from a British person. –
depicts colonization of the land, thinks it belongs entirely to him.
Friday – Crusoe: master – servant relationship.
Colonization of Friday – process of civilizing Friday. Crusoe teaches Friday to speak English,
encourages him to eat goat (you know, instead of human flesh), and aids in his conversion to
Christianity. He names him Friday – to commemorate the day when he saved Friday.
Written in a Puritan way, explores it through the predestination. Christian British who carries
a gun with him what is a symbol of technology, civilization.
For centuries this text have a model of perfect colonizer. Friday – colonized “black savage
cannibal”. The novel is also important because it represents formal realism, also the first novel
in English. In literature there’s a discussion of representation of reality in fiction, and Defoe
gives us formal realism – story made that a reader can believe it’s a real story.
What does he do to make his story reliable?
- providing precise dates, chronological linear, reality of late 19th century, precise
geographical places, he explains his heritage background, autobiographical
- Preface preceding the novel – to make readers believe that they are reading about real
events
- the form: diary/journal (Crusoe gave Defoe his journal)

Foe by Coetzee
What is new is that the character of a woman is introduced in the novel.
Friday catches fish. Crusoe provides him with shelter.
Does Crusoe Christianize Friday?
Friday stays pagan. He doesn’t become a religious person at all.
How old is Crusoe?
Kinda old. He doesn’t keep a journal challenges the original idea of the novel based on a diary.
We don’t have a document that could precisely verify it. Undermines the idea of the original
text’s diary.
What is also different: Crusoe can’t teach Friday language cause his tongue is cut off. But
really do not desire to teach him anyway. Doesn’t want to civilize him and make him English.
What happened to Friday?
Cannot really verify it, since Friday stays mute. Susan suspects that the slavers did it. May have
been delicacy to them or because they couldn’t stand Friday crying. Crusoe make several
hypothesis but we don’t really know what happened.
Tongue cut off – evidence of violence of colonialism. Metaphorically – colonizer lose their
mother tongue, speak for themselves. It’s always the story of a colonizer, not the colonized.
The image of Crusoe is also different. He’s an English man that doesn’t really care to return to
England. When Susan meets him he’s much older than in the original story.
What happens to Crusoe in Coetzee’s novel?
They return on a ship to England, but midway he dies and never actually returns.
All in all, what we get in the novel is the different image of Crusoe. Contradicts the original
image of Crusoe as a colonizer. Fights the image of a colonizer. Crusoe doesn’t care about
civilization of Friday. The center of attention is Friday, not Crusoe himself.
Susan, when she return to England, wants to ask Foe to write the story and publish it. It is
Friday’s story that she wants to tell. But it cannot be told by Friday himself.
Anti-thesis of colonizer (Crusoe)
Friday – the center (victim of colonialism)

What’s the result?

Treated as a novel that criticizes colonies therefore it is a novel that started post-colonialism
in British fiction.

Post-colonialism – new trend in literature, appears when colonialism is over. More or less,
after WWII. Reaction against colonial past and heritage. Giving the voice to colonized who for
centuries were marginalized or not given voice at all. Rebellion against colonial heritage.
Shows that Friday became a victim of violence of colonizers. Here we have the suffering not
“saving and civilizing”. So changed by colonialism that he cannot speak for himself. On the
level of the characters or the author.

If they wanted their voice to be heard they must have used the English language, which is
problematic kind of because it’s the language of the colonizers.
Intertextuality becomes important literary device as to rewrite stories. Contradicting ideas –
Friday has his own culture, is a victim – totally different story. Contradicts the idea of
truthfulness of Crusoe – in Foe, he doesn’t have a journal. The role of Daniel Defoe is also
different. Some authors add elements like pirates, cannibal to attract more readers –
contradicts the truthful account (it’s fabrication)
Post-modernism - period in literature in art after modernism, , 60s after WWII, modernism
was the last period in literature that sth new could be written according to John Barth
"Literature of Exhaustion" – in his view, the only thing that writers can do is to rewrite.
Intertextuality was used to comment on reality, comment on heritage or show new meaning,
that it lost in function. In post-modernism is a device to play with, in a lighthearted way. We
should use literature to play, experiment using things that we already have in literature. He
uses the convention of realistic fiction and ironizes it.
Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author" – French philosopher that comes to a similar
conclusion, for a literature to develop we have to kill the author – we need to stop looking at
literature in terms of the author – free the text from the author without the connection from
the author. Meaning of the text to a reader. He also shows that texts influence one another.
We should look at a text as a comment of what was already written – new approach of looking
at literature. Endless references to other text. Authorship is not important. Writers play with
the idea of authorship – this boundary ceases. e.g. Foe becomes a character.
It ends the discussion of how realistic fiction should be. Fiction is fiction.
We can only represent the perception of reality. How subjective we perceive the reality. Post-
modernism showed that literature is not able to represent reality, it’s about “playing with the
representation of reality” – mixing realistic elements with non-realistic – blurring the border.
Meta-fiction – fiction about fiction. Describes literary device introducing extracts that
comment the idea of fiction, what is representational reality.
Historiographic metafiction – one of the postmodern novel which discards projecting present
beliefs and standards onto the past.
In the second part of the novel we have a constant discussion between Foe and Susan about
the story itself. About what makes a good story. Meta fictionality of the text.
Why is Defoe called Foe?
Foe is called Foe not Defoe because he Defoe fabricated his surname, his real surname was
Foe. Foe in English means the enemy. In post-colonial terms, Foe is the enemy – the colonizer.
Or may be understood in post-modernism way that we have to “kill the author”.
Element of histotrophic metafiction – is Foe a historical character or just creation of Coetzee?
Part four – at the end of the novel. What happens?