드포의 불완전한 식민주체 그리기: 『 로빈슨 크루소 』의 역사적 재고 (Defoe’s incomplete colonial subject: Robinson Crusoe in the Historical Context)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국근대영미소설학회
· 수록지 정보 : 근대영미소설 / 14권 / 2호 / 61 ~ 88페이지
· 저자명 : 김은령

초록

This paper aims to examine the fluid relationship between the master and the slave or the colonial subject and the colonized other in Robinson Crusoe by placing it in the historical context that explains the English african slave trade and the slavery in the late 17th to the early 18th centuries. After the Glorious Revolution, Englishmen could get the natural rights to trade, especially, to trade the african slaves for the purpose of increasing the individual wealth in the times of Defoe, and his protagonist, Crusoe went on board a ship for Africa with the same purpose of getting profit from such a trade. Faced with the changed historical situations, Defoe seemed to have the ambivalent views on the slavery and English slave trade, which was reflected on the various texts like the non-fictional essays or a satire poem, and such historical insight was projected into Robinson Crusoe. In Robinson Crusoe, many critics have long been fascinated to focus on the relationship between Crusoe and Friday in terms of its universal symbolic representation of the master vs. the slave, the subject vs. the other, and the whites vs. the blacks or the natives. And this tendency's been reinforced from the postcolonial perspectives. However, the boundary between the master and the slave was not fixed but flexible, changeable, and fluid whenever the characters were encountered in different cultural, economic, religious, and geographical contexts. Crusoe, who was considered as the unique type of a white modern individual capitalist in times of European expansionism, failed to be recognized as the complete or absolute colonial subject subordinating other beings because there were many others, in other words, there was no definite or complete other of Crusoe in terms of race, civilization, and economics in Robinson Crusoe. For these reasons, the prejudice that Friday is the black slave in the text must be reconsidered, and this question will open to a new interpretation of Robinson Crusoe.

영어초록

This paper aims to examine the fluid relationship between the master and the slave or the colonial subject and the colonized other in Robinson Crusoe by placing it in the historical context that explains the English african slave trade and the slavery in the late 17th to the early 18th centuries. After the Glorious Revolution, Englishmen could get the natural rights to trade, especially, to trade the african slaves for the purpose of increasing the individual wealth in the times of Defoe, and his protagonist, Crusoe went on board a ship for Africa with the same purpose of getting profit from such a trade. Faced with the changed historical situations, Defoe seemed to have the ambivalent views on the slavery and English slave trade, which was reflected on the various texts like the non-fictional essays or a satire poem, and such historical insight was projected into Robinson Crusoe. In Robinson Crusoe, many critics have long been fascinated to focus on the relationship between Crusoe and Friday in terms of its universal symbolic representation of the master vs. the slave, the subject vs. the other, and the whites vs. the blacks or the natives. And this tendency's been reinforced from the postcolonial perspectives. However, the boundary between the master and the slave was not fixed but flexible, changeable, and fluid whenever the characters were encountered in different cultural, economic, religious, and geographical contexts. Crusoe, who was considered as the unique type of a white modern individual capitalist in times of European expansionism, failed to be recognized as the complete or absolute colonial subject subordinating other beings because there were many others, in other words, there was no definite or complete other of Crusoe in terms of race, civilization, and economics in Robinson Crusoe. For these reasons, the prejudice that Friday is the black slave in the text must be reconsidered, and this question will open to a new interpretation of Robinson Crusoe.

참고자료

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