Circum Atlantic Space and Class Identity Formation and Transformation: The Case of The European, The African and The American in The English Novel
Journal Title: Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - Year 2015, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
The argument in this paper says identities are not given but they keep changing particularly in “The New World” and this paper looks at English literature, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America. Defoe shows the new avenues and possibilities of self exploration offered by the New World. In this book the concept of identity will be discussed vis-à-vis the ship, the sea, and the island chronotopes. The contention being that these alternative spaces exert certain demands and expectations on individuals which make constant adjustments and metamorphosis inevitable for both Robinson Crusoe and Friday, his servant. Meanwhile, Alexander Exquemelin’s portrays the Atlantic world with its connecting link, the ship as elastic space which can be exploited, manipulated, appropriated, and utilized for self creation, agency and subjectivity. Both Robinson Crusoe and The Buccaneers of America deal with the issue of economic subjectivity: i.e. the romanticized and idealized homo-economicus of Robinson Crusoe in his utopian island and the real world of conspiracy and piracy, extravagancy, debauchery, and waste of the buccaneers. The two texts show the honorific and the horrific ways of material accumulation and identity formation and transformation which the Atlantic space made possible from the seventeenth right up to the early nineteenth centuries. The two novels in contention show two contradictory manifestations of the ‘imperial identity’ namely the noble merchant and the despicable pirate’s quests for bullion and status.. Keywords: English literature, noble, Robinson Crusoe
Authors and Affiliations
Thinkwell Ngwenya
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