Foe: The Intersection Of The Postcolonial And The Postmodern

The fiction Foe by J.M.Coetzee from south Africa in 1986 is established as a rewriting work of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.Robinson Crusoe has long been seen as the prototype of realist fiction by critics.It promotes colonialism by glorifying Crusoe's success through his own hard work,and has gone down in history as the true story of the island.However,Coetzee claims that the realistic literature ,which is created by Daniel Defoe,is hardly as true as he said.Conversely,he considers that the realistic novel Robinson Crusoe,which belongs to a kind of fictional authenticity,serves for imperialism cause at that time.Then,Coetzee contextualizes the novel Foe's writing position in light of South African's postcolonial context,and has a postmodern rewriting of Robinson Crusoe.Foe narrates a female castaway Susan Barton, who seeks to tell her own's island story in vain.Coetzee employs all kinds of postmodernism narrative ploys to undermine the sense of true history,which is constructed by realistic language and narrative.Consequently,it reveals the power structure in the history composition,which embodys Foe's struggle for history and clonial discoure authority, and finally forms the theme of subverting the hegemony of imperialism culture.So it can be said that Coetzee's such literary dreconstruction of traditional realism is a political act of decolonization.This MA thesis is divided into four parts.The first part analyses the reason for postcolonial theme and postmodernistic writing of Foe from composition context and hybrid cultural identity.The second part focuses on Foe's theme of undermining imperialism culture hegemony.It discusses Coetzee's struggle for African political and social circumstance,from deconstruction of dualistic pattern,struggle for history authority,and subversion of clonial discourse authority.The third part analyses parody and deconstruction of realistic literature in Foe from employing realistic techniques and postmodernistic narrative ploys.The fourth part emphasize on Foe's narrative structure.Being dependent on Genette's narrative theory,it analyses the multiple narrative levels in Foe,disclosing the authorative structure in narrative.