Language Research

Analyzing Otherizing Discourse and Colonialism in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Mohammad Amin Mozaheb

Department of Foreign Languages, Language Center, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2024.381721.666899
Abstract
At the beginning of the 18th century, with the act of the parliaments of England and Scotland, the four countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were formed the Great Britain, and the British identity was added to the people of these countries. Along with this union and with the advancement of sciences, the British took the first steps to become a colonial power. But in the first place, it was necessary to form the idea of empire in the minds of the British; Therefore, English authors and travel writers started to compose works whose themes were the discovery of distant lands, colonization and confrontation with the natives. One of these people was Daniel Defoe, who in his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), which is one of the texts subject to reading in the course Novel 1, B.A. in English Language and Literature in Iran, depicted the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. In the novel, he managed not only to establish a colony for himself and achieved great wealth, but also became a slave owner in Latin America in the cotton fields. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the above novel in light of postcolonial criticism to reveal the colonial discourse in the work, that is, the conquest of the natives and their reduction to others and colonial subjects

Keywords

English Novel
Robinson Crusoe
Colonial discourse
otherness
postcolonial criticism
Subjects
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Language Research
Volume 15, Issue 2 - Serial Number 26
January 2025
Pages 295-310

  • Receive Date 31 August 2024
  • Revise Date 06 October 2024
  • Accept Date 10 December 2024

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