Studies in Literature and Language
(Hi)story in Search of Author(ity): Feminine Narration in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe
Abstract
Considering women as marginalized in the patriarchal frames, postcolonial studies has given impetus to a more meticulous study of the (mis)representation of women in literature. In parallel, Post-colonial writers have tried to give voice to this silenced group. Deprived of a voice in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the female is given prominence as the narrator of its postmodern rewriting, Coetzee’s Foe. An exemplary postcolonial work in many respects, Foe also focuses the intersection of postcolonialsim and feminism in its use of a female point of view. The present paper is an attempt to analyze the significance of this female narrator, Susan Barton, with regard to such postcolonial issues as resistance, identity and language. Central to the discussion is the modality of Coetzee’s postmodern rewriting, that is, his employment of ‘historiographic metafiction’ and its relevance to the postcolonial issues addressed.
Key words: J.M. Coetzee; Foe; Daniel Defoe; Robinson Crusoe; Historiographic metafiction; Colonialism; Feminine narration; History
Keywords
References
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n
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