The Representation Of Englishness In Captain Singleton

Daniel Defoe is a famous English writer of the early eighteenth century, traditionallyknown as the first British novelist. His Captain Singleton (1720) is a masterly piece ofrealism narrated by the protagonist Singleton himself about his twice oversea adventures: histrek across Africa and his piracy at sea. So far the special study of Captain Singleton wasrarely seen in China, but some critics abroad have given their comments on this novel fromdifferent aspects. The majority of them have noticed that this novel embodies the prevailingmercantile colonialism of that age but little researcher has been done to consider therelationship between Defoe’s novel writing and the Englishness in the early eighteenthcentury from the perspective of cultural representation.The concept representation in cultural studies connects meaning and language to culture.In the constructionist context, this novel does not just simply represent the historical storiesof that time, or propaganda Defoe’s advocacy, but fulfills the British’s financial dream andstimulates their passion for oversea expansion in their creative imagination. More importantly,Singleton’s common practices of mercantile colonialism are legitimated ideologically andethically as the English culture to the core “Englishness”. And the making of Englishness hasclose relation to the development of the British Empire. The eighteenth-century Britain wasan age of mercantile colonialism that witnessed the rising of the novel as well as the empire.Therefore, by writing or reading the novel, the writer and his British readers would reach aconsensus on the perception of the remote other world and their shared identity, to constructand maintain their claimed nation-ness in imagination.As the representation of Englishness should take the typical components of the empireinto consideration, which include “ethnic, national, cultural, and religious diversity”, thus thisthesis is divided into three chapters to explore how the representations of Englishness worksin Captain Singleton. Chapter One discusses the civilized ethnicity from English traits andthe Christianity of Englishmen. Singleton was taken abroad as a child and returned toEngland as a grown-up. He encountered some Englishmen and many other ethnic groupsduring his oversea adventure. From their differences Singleton who was homeless and irreligious saw the civilized English ethnicity and tried to repent and reside in England for therest of his life. Chapter Two reveals the representation of the legitimated practices ofSingleton’s trades in Africa and his piracy at sea. His exploration and exploitation in Africaseems to spread civilization through trading with the natives while his piracy at sea lookedmore like doing business with less bloodshed. Singleton was almost represented as anenterprising English merchant who heroically accumulated wealth for his nation. ChapterThree focuses on the centralized nationhood by taking England as the geographical centre andEnglish nationality as the spiritual centre. Singleton’s oversea travel among the worldwidegeographical space provides him with the opportunities to contact different ethnicities andvarious cultures, which contribute to constructing the imagined centrality as the reference.Meanwhile, Singleton gradually finds that his accumulated huge wealth brought him nosatisfaction and eventually realizes the importance of England as the home-like spiritualcentre, which reflects that the Anglo-centric sense of nationality was coming into being.To some degree, Defoe imaginatively predicts British Empire’s future overseasexpansion in Captain Singleton. By analyzing the cultural representation of Englishness, thisthesis tries to draw a conclusion that the representation of Englishness in this novel in facthelps to construct Englishness in the early eighteenth century as the self-conceived collectivenationality, which laid the solid foundation for the world domination of British Empire.