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Daniel Defoe’s Writing Strategies in Roxana: From Captivity towards Freedom Yoo Jin Choi (Hanyang Women’s University) Roxana demonstrates a narrative that subverts the patriarchal order and the gender roles the English society inequitably oppressed upon women. Infantalized by the legal, social, and economic dependence on their husbands, women in this period were defined merely as wives and as mothers. Defoe, by presenting four plot strategies, reconceptualized and reconfigurated the concept of woman as a mere body that was pervasively held in the society. These are the four strategies the writer used in the text: First, he identified the patriarchy with folly; Second, he disguised Roxana as a mere body by donning her an identity of whore and slipped her into the patriarchal society; Third, he endowed Roxana with a voice and let her throw harsh criticisms upon the patriarchal institutions; Last, by employing a fantastic narrative into the text, he deconstructed the patriarchy and provided freedom to women in the eighteenth century England. As literacy rose rapidly in the eighteenth century England, a great number of printed books and periodicals were published to satisfy the public's need. Defoe, who knew well enough about the sentiment of the century and the needs of the reading public, as well as the growing number of women readers, incorporated the scenes and spirits of the masquerade into his novel, Roxana, which convey subversive powers that divert and threaten the taxonomy of the society.

본고는 드포(Daniel Defoe)의 『로빈슨 크루소』(Robinson Crusoe, 1719)와 예이츠의 전환기 시를 중심으로 각 작품의 배경이 되는 18세기 초 영국 사회와 20세기 초 아일랜드 사회를 조명한다. 우선 이 연구는 『로빈슨 크루소』가 소설의 발생을 중심으로 하는 당대 사회적 변화와 이로 인한 세대 및 계층 간의 갈등 구도 속에서 탄생하였다는 점에 주목한다. 또한, ‘종교적 전통으로의 회귀’에 초점을 맞추어 18세기 초 영국의 사회와 문화 속에서 이 소설이 담당하는 역할과 가치를 고찰한다. 한편 예이츠의 전환기 시는 20세기 초 아일랜드 사회에서의 갈등과 밀접한 관계를 지닌다. 문화운동으로 아일랜드 민족을 통합하려는 예이츠의 시도는 아일랜드 민족에 내재된 언어, 종교, 계층의 다양성으로 인해 오히려 분열의 지속, 심화 양상을 보인다. 예이츠는 전환기 시인 ｢1913년 9월｣(“September 1913”)에서 물질주의에 집착하는 가톨릭 중산층에 대한 경계심을 표현하고 중산층에 대항하여 ｢낚시꾼｣(“The Fisherman”)에서 이상적 인간상을 제시한다. 그는 가톨릭 중산층과 영국계 개신교 엘리트 집단 양쪽을 비판하며, 인간애에 기초한 귀족주의를 지향한다.

Based on the rise of the novel and the changes it caused in the society and the culture in the early 18th century England and the conflicts in the early 20th century in which W. B. Yeats’s Transitional Poetry is set, this article examines the conflicts between generations/classes through Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Yeats’s Transitional Poetry. Robinson Crusoe shows the part of the process of adapting the previous social structure to a newly changed environment by connecting the process of spiritual conversion of Crusoe before and after the island. Robinson Crusoe is significant in that it not only adopted Puritanism, which motivated the religious and moral characteristics of the English people until the late 17th century, but also sought to restore piety by adapting it to a new social structure in the 18th century. In the early 20th century Yeats’s attempt to unify the Irish people show rather persistent and deepening divisions due to the diversity of language, religion, and class inherent in the Irish people. In “September 1913”, Yeats expresses his caution against the materialistic middle class and presented the ideal human image in “The Fisherman”. He criticizes both the Catholic middle class and the British Protestant elite, and pursues aristocracy based on humanism.

This paper employs theories of biopolitics to examine the narrator’s rise to sovereign power and his exercise of biopower upon racialized bodies in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. I argue that race is a crucial factor that not only enables but further complicates Crusoe’s exertion of sovereign authority. Drawing upon the narrative’s conflicted division between, or occasional conflation of, zoe and bios, key terms through which Giorgio Agamben explicates conditions of human life, this paper seeks to create an intervention in existing scholarly discussions by examining the complex nature of Crusoe’s sovereign power and sovereign exception. By closely examining scenes where Crusoe interacts with cannibals and his slave/companion Friday, with a particular focus on the narrator’s initial reluctance in, and ultimate enforcement of, punishing cannibals for their barbarity, this paper explores configurations of race in Defoe’s early novel. The analysis mainly focuses on how different characters’ racial identities serve as impacting factors in Crusoe’s sovereign decision. Crusoe’s sovereign power becomes a hybridized version of governing, in which elements of absolute sovereignty and disciplinary training merge. Roberto Esposito’s logic of immunization anchors the reading of Crusoe’s incorporation of the racialized Other into his sovereignty, in which his initial desire to establish a protective boundary between himself and foreign, threatening elements becomes altered. I read Crusoe’s education of Friday as a process of dilution that takes place in advance of immunization via vaccination. Tracing the theoretical discussions of governmentality and sovereignty in biopolitical theory through Defoe’s early novel, this paper seeks to examine how race serves as a biopolitical factor in Crusoe’s attempt to establish his sovereign power on the island.

Henry Fielding is quite an interesting writer in that he has a systematic theory of novels and he has actively as well as openly manifested his ideas. He advocates his literary theories and principles in his short “Preface” to Joseph Andrews, throughout the 18 essays featured in Tom Jones, and via the ever-present, self-conscious voices of author-narrator in most of his novels. Ian Watt, who defines the characteristics of the new literary genre that appeared in the first half of the 18th century as “formal realism,” emphasizes the ways by which novelists depict the realistic characters and their common lives by means of the detailed and concrete manner of writing. He evaluates Daniel Defoe as first practitioner and praises Samuel Richardson's effort in taking step further; but diagnoses Fielding’s work as stepping aside. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize Fielding's theory of novels, to define his status as one of the important figures in the early development of this genre, and to clarify his purpose and intentions as a novelist. He criticizes vehemently contemporary licentious romances and tries to land his literary works a place among the classics. He calls his novels “history,” and maintains true historians should imitate nature, and its general and universal truths. Furthermore, Fielding, by means of his “epic prose” style, depicts the social milieu of his time, and parodies both the impulse of the middle class, which tries to establish a new social order, and the incapability and irresponsibility of the upper ruling class. His ultimate goal in literature can be summarized as “the exposure of vanity and hypocrisy in society, and the recommendation of the antithetical virtues—charity, chastity, and the classical ideal of life.”

This article examines the relationship between clerical portraits in some works from the Restoration period to the eighteenth century and the artists' changing perceptions of their roles as social reformers. The ancient literary tradition of portraiture of clergymen, “balanced portrait,” in which both the negative and negative are juxtaposed, remained an integral part of the writers' technique and suggested their relationship to the clerical figures. In the works the writers employed the balanced portrait. After the Restoration, writers began destroying the conventional antithesis. Though the balance still existed, the references to good clergymen are politically charged and begin to question the clergy's role as moral reformer.

This paper aims to interpret the meaning of the masquerade in Roxana in terms of Lacanian philosophy, which allows us to see the masquerade as Roxana’s means to achieve her feminine identity in the symbolic order/society. Roxana’s multiple names reveal her unstable position in the phallic society, and her rejection of the (non-) identities imposed by the society is inevitable because, as Lacan says, “woman does not exist” in the symbolic order, that is, she cannot be represented by the society. Therefore, Roxana is obliged to create her own identity which can represent her. It is the masquerade and role-playing which she chooses (strictly speaking, she is compelled to choose) as her means of creating her self, because masquerading is the only choice for her to survive in the male-oriented society without raising any fear or anxiety from men, that is, masquerading is her destiny. In this sense, masquerade, as Lacan argues, is the nature of her femininity, or rather the masquerade is Roxana herself.

The paper examines the English adventure fiction Robinson Crusoe against the background of the Enclosure Movement. Historically, “enclosure” or “inclosure” has been a practical approach in the European agricultural revolution between the twelfth century and the nineteenth century. However, the process of enclosure is not merely within land ownership. Instead, it has a far-reaching impact on various domains. In Daniel Defoe’s literal work Robinson Crusoe, the element with its metaphorical denotation plays a vital part in depicting the male protagonist’s mental states and physical behaviours. Thus, the current project explores Defoe’s point of view on the power of enclosure. In the novel, what Crusoe refers to as an enclosure is beyond the ontological meaning of the Movement. The essay claims that the move to metonymically include places and people into his world is not a signal of accepting and assimilating them as those of his group but a procedure to abstract and alienate them from either Crusoe’s or their scopes. The article adopts the corpus linguistics method and conventional text analysis in the discussion. The research tends to provide a fresh perspective on understanding Defoe’s political vision as well as the later Enclosure Movement.

This article investigates Roxana’s turbulent national performance by attending to the relationship between Turkishness and Englishness expressed through the protagonist’s two names, “Roxana” and “Mother.” Arguing that Roxana’s impulse for cultural masquerade originates from her nebulous national heritage, this paper examines how the name “Roxana” generates vexing questions about the protagonist’s sense of social belonging. Specifically, I examine how Roxana’s political performance finds its most troubling expression through her negotiation with English motherhood. Roxana’s pseudo-Turkishness, rather than obscuring her Englishness, corroborates her identity as an English mother. Put another way, Roxana’s oriental naming was contingent on, not contrary to, an English model of discursive selfhood that Roxana refuses to express through her maternal body. She unmothers herself, even when her monstrous motherhood dubs her Englishness as unbecoming. That said, the article attempts to show why Roxana compulsively applies for a cosmopolitan citizenship that belies her nationality and race, further identifying how Turkishness and Englishness, two seemingly disparate identities, converge through Roxana’s maternal body. Roxana, then, posits the origin of Englishness not as engendered by Enlightenment thoughts of endoculturalism or the self-enclosed domestic household, but from the ruptures heralded by a cosmopolitan transaction of the maternal body posing as the Other.

This paper studies the role, imposed by society, of Moll Flanders, the heroine in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. She is unusual in that she escapes from the conventionally imposed role as a woman and proceeds to become a woman, more specifically, a masculine woman, who adopts so-called masculine features to survive in a male-dominated society. In order to obtain the means to sustain, she deserts her own children, take advantage of men, steals, and deceives, using her courage, slyness, intelligence, or business strategy. While pursuing her ways to survive, she gets hardened to her guilt, through showing off her pride in or proving her ability, even when she has obtained enough fund to live. Finally she gets caught and incarcerated. In jail, she alters and repents on what she has done. She reassumes her feminine values and becomes a new person who can feel and love. Through the process of her repentance Defoe reveals his belief in the balance of the masculine and the feminine in making this world livable. Defoe demanded society be reformed so that woman did not have to be a masculine woman to survive in society.

By highlighting Roxana’s paradoxical construction as both a consumer and a commodity in the broader framework of material culture in the eighteenth century, this paper considers how Roxana exercises agency as the female consumer in the new economic order through her manipulation of her status as both a subject and an object of exchange. By underscoring the interconnections between economic and gender discourses, I argue that Roxana becomes an active, even transgressive, agent in the marketplace, one who uses the delights of commodities and consumption to fashion and empower herself, while she also carefully exploits her status of an object of exchange for her own ends. Just as she fashions new selves through her use of commodities, her masquerades recapitulate the uncertainty and fluidity of the eighteenth-century British market and its discourses, making it possible for her to manufacture and circulate different selves for her own profit. While the early part of Roxana celebrates the heroine’s ability to forge new selves through consumption, its later sequences dramatize Defoe’s reservations about the unruly power of the female consumer and its threat on English domestic virtues through Susan, who would ultimately limit Roxana to a private, domestic role. As such, Roxana dramatizes radical new possibilities for female agency within the developing consumer culture, yet it also attempts to contain and regulate these transgressive female desires within the prescribed ideal of domesticity.

This paper seeks to examine the fictional representations of masquerade in Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and Daniel Defoe’s Roxana in an attempt to demonstrate how these texts reflect and inscribe the conflicting responses to the cultural institution of the masquerade in eighteenth-century England. While the anonymity of disguise allowed the very principles of normal sexual, social, and metaphysical hierarchies to be challenged, many viewed the license offered by masquerades with great concern and fear. By exploring how the theme of masquerade is linked to female representation and spectatorship in feminist film theories, this paper contends that Haywood presents the masquerade as positive and liberating for the female protagonist and ends with a vision of feminocracy. Defoe, on the other hand, problematizes the female masquerade and its association with female liberation and gender transgression. Paradoxically, his complicated portrayal of Roxana’s masquerade draws attention to the cultural economy of the patriarchal society where women are forced to assume the status object and symbol of masculine desire for security and autonomy. As such, Haywood and Defoe both dramatize how the theme of the female masquerade is inextricable from complex questions such as sexual desire, independence and freedom, and the female body bound to biological or familial ties in the patriarchal society.

In this interdisciplinary essay, I combine a literary and cultural-studies approach to the study of the relationship between road-making and literature. The enclosure of lands and the construction of turnpikes and canals not only broadened opportunities for travel and navigation but also accelerated the dissemination of commodities of all sorts. These geographical developments expanded familiar notions of place that were framed by the traditional units of parish, estate or even metropolis. Turning to Foucauldian and economic views of the implications of the turnpikes, I argue that the turnpike road system made geography fragmented but simultaneously reshaped fragmented geography into a more organized network of improved roads. Highlighting the impact of the spread of turnpikes and canals in the early eighteenth century material conditions of writing, I aim to contribute to the productive field of the intersection of geography and literature. Through the telling phrase, “the great thoroughfare of the Brain,” Daniel Defoe establishes a sense of place that locates authors within specific circuits of information, particularly within the turnpike road system as the medium and outcome, the precondition and embodiment, of the modern production of space. Crusoe’s voyage beyond the island of Juan Fernandez enfolds a return to the present Britain to reconfigure Defoe’s sense of the cultural geographies of novel writing.

By focusing on how Defoe represents and critiques Roxana’s thorough capitalistic rationality which fabricates a convincing self-defensive narrative in Roxana, I argue that the novel reveals the author’s deep angst of a new mode of self-fashioning of homo oeconomicus. The authenticity of Roxana’s confessional but specious autobiographical narrative remains a critical conundrum due to its salient incongruity with the typical Protestant introspective self-discipline predicated on Christian instruction. Roxana’s seemingly remorseful remarks and confessions, which appear with a suspicious frequency in the novel, contradict themselves, as her peculiar narrative structure and strategy are indicative of a surreptitious intention of weaving her past nefarious acts into a feigned repentance to the aim of camouflaging her unvarying immorality and unceasing sexual and material desire. In Roxana Defoe captures and delves into the increasing tension between Protestant and material values in the newly emergent modern capitalism of his age, as well as its effect on the way in which the modern individual concocts a plausible narrative for herself. Moralism and materialism are, for Defoe, to be concatenated into a fabricated self-defensive narrative in the age of new homo oeconomicus.

While seeking affinity between Aphra Behn’s and Daniel Defoe’s works may seem irrelevant, Behn’s Love Letters and Defoe’s Journal in fact betray the same generic ambiguities in oscillating between history and fiction. Behn’s Love Letters is based on concrete historical facts and written from the author’s clearly pro-Tory perspective. Behn was one of the practitioners of early modern English historiography informed by the Baconian view that “history should be useful.” However, Love Letters discloses traits of fiction too, within the tradition of romance that idealizes characters and lacks verisimilitude of plot. In its fusion of history and fiction, Defoe’s Journal is not different from Behn’s Love Letters. The Journal has historical accuracy in details such as specific characters and anecdotes. Yet, such factual details serve to expose the fictiveness of the narrator’s self-identification. Furthermore, given its serious investment in the narrator’s spiritual reconciliation, the Journal cannot be read as a pure historical writing. In brief, Behn’s and Defoe’s works reflect the contradictory requirement of the era when history and fiction penetrated reciprocally.

In Roxana, the protagonist and narrator Roxana’s first-person telling is torn between the narrative past describing her criminal but prosperous life and the narrative present moralizing and condemning her past life. This paper examines how such a gap in narrative reflects crises in moral/religious terms and Roxana’s self/gender identity, both of which are intimately connected to the early eighteenth-century space of monetary economy and social mobility. While rendering an extreme case of social mobility through Roxana, Defoe seems to question where such a social force is going with his concern for certain moral values to settle with. With all Defoe’s warning against a wrong use, however, the reader herself is already into the relations of exchange, where the author’s intention may not meet with the reader/consumer’s use. The use value of the book is not guaranteed by the author’s intention nor by the story itself, still less by real readers of different interests and classes and genders.

This article claims that we can find posthumanist possibilities in Daniel Defoe’s use of “description” in The Storm (1704) as a technique which levels off the differences between human and non-human agents. A few critics have indicated that The Storm, in contrast to A Journal of the Plague Year, lacks literary value due to its striking absence of a sympathetic gaze toward human suffering and tragedy during the great storm in 1703. However, I argue that this very lack of humanity in The Storm encapsulates Defoe’s authorial strategy to create the posthumanist narrative of disaster in which every being affected by the storm?houses, ships, trees, bricks, and people?is given an equal measure of attention. By linking the theory of narrative with posthumanist theory, this article demonstrates the power of “description” in The Storm that treats humans as things and things as humans. Also, The Storm’s posthumanist gesture strikingly contrasts with the self-centeredness of the protagonists in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Roxana who commonly exhibit human-centric interpretations of the storm at sea.

디포(Daniel Defoe)는 1707년 잉글랜드와 스코트랜드의 통합, 즉 영국(United Kingdom of Great Britain)의 탄생 과정에 깊히 관여한 인물이다. 그러나 1714년이후 그의 관심은 가정에 많은 비중을 두었다. 거기에는 디포가 처한 현실적 상황이 반영되었다. 무엇보다 1714년 이후 그를 후원했던 할리가 더 이상 그를 지원할 수 없게 됨에 따라 디포는 당장 삶의 새로운 계기를 마련해야 했다. 그 결과 그는 당시 꾸준하게 그리고 지속적으로 많이 팔리는 품행 지침서에 눈을 돌리게 되었다. 그것이 바로 『가족의 선생님』이었다. 『가족의 선생님』은 프로테스탄트의 왕위 계승을 신앙적 차원에서 확립하려는 의도를 반영했다. 디포는 가톨릭인 자코바이트의 저항을 목도한 후 개신교도가 국왕으로 즉위하는 국가 체제를 보다 굳건하게 하고자 했다. 그래서 그는 자녀와 서번트들이 신실한 프로테스탄트로 성장할 수 있도록 가정에서의 신앙 교육을 강조하게 되었다. 디포는 『가족의 선생님』에서 하나님의 존재, 원죄의 기원과 결과, 구원 그리고 십계명 등을 자녀는 물론 당시 가족의 성원으로 인식되는 서번트에게 철저히 교육할 것을 주장했다. 그것을 통해 위계 질서에 순종하는 인물을 욱성하고자 했던 것이다. 건전한 사회 및 국가 질서를 수립하기 위한 기초 단계인 가정이 신실할 경우 사회의 질서가 제대로 확립된다는 것이 그것의 배경이라 할 수 있다. 프로테스탄트 국가의 수립과 운영을 강조한 디포는 나아가 잉글랜드의 번영을 강조했다. 그것을 통해 통합의 유익함을 나타내어 자신의 노력을 정당화하고자 했던 것이다. 그러면서 그는 근면성실하고 신실한 노동력의 필요성을 강조했 다. 거기에는 이윤 추구의 정당화를 통해 경제 활동에 적극적이었던 신흥 중간 계층의 청교주의적 가치관이 반영되었다. 생산 활동의 대부분을 인력으로 하는 당시 경제 구조에서 근면성실하고 신실한 노동력이 무엇보다 절실하기 때문이다.

Daniel Defoe was a person who was deeply involved in the integration of England and Scotland in 1707; the process of birth of the UK. Since 1714, he had a deep interest in the role of families. This arose from the situations he was facing in his own life. Robert Harley, who was sponsoring him at the time, was no longer able to support Defoe so Defoe had to look for new opportunities. As a result, he began to sell a conduct book. The conduct book was called “The family instructor”. The family instructor was intended to help establish protestant’s succession to the throne in the religious dimension. After witnessing the Jacobite resistance, Defoe wanted to strengthen the Protestant Monarch’s throne in the country. To do so, he emphasised family education in faith so that children and servants can grow as faithful Protestants. Defoe emphasised the existence of God, the origin and consequence of the original sin, salvation and the Ten Commandments in The family instructor. He thoroughly educated servants who were also recognised as members of the family, alongside children. It tried to cultivate the people who follow the social hierarchy. Defoe emphasised the importance of establishing a healthy society and a national order built on faithful homes. Defoe’s emphasis on the establishment and operation of the Protestant state highlighted the prosperity of England. He tried to show the benefits of consolidation in the society. Along with that he emphasised the need for diligent, sincere and faithful labour. The reasoning behind this was that the economic structure at the time desired industrial, diligent, honest, and faithful workforce. This reflected the profit-seeking middle class’ views based on Puritan values.

It was during the golden age of piracy from 1650 to 1730 that pirates ?whether they were called buccaneers, privateers, rovers or otherwise? were ruthless in their pursuit of profit. At the end of the golden age, Daniel Defoe published the novel Captain Singleton (1720). Intriguingly, his vast knowledge on piracy, which was demonstrated clearly in his other novels and prose, kept the novel far from the cruel and inhumane scenes of piracy. In this paper, I argue that the absence of specific descriptions on piracy was intended to justify contemporary commerce and trade as a legitimate pursuit of wealth and examine Alexander Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America (1684) to show that depictions of cruel scenes, which guarantee the authenticity of his writing, leave him vulnerable to criticism against his involvement in piracy. In the novel, Defoe attributes contradiction and cruelty to piracy, exposing the satirical or comical distance from pirates. He does not depict scenes of inhumane violence and cruelty by Singleton and his gang but rather takes pains to describe pirates as inferior traders. In other words, they aim to get more money but have no clear idea of how to maximize profit. Right after the pirates, like traders, appear to pursue interests with economic consideration of their actions, Defoe begins to describe Singleton’s religious repentance and attempted to reconcile the social convention with piracy. More important is not the ending but rather the way of understanding piracy: Implicit in rendering pirates as inferior traders is his support of legitimate trade. While removing atrocities from pirates and placing them adjacent to traders, Defoe indirectly glorifies imperialistic commerce as a legitimate pursuit of wealth.