Analysis Of Defoe's A New Voyage Round The World

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Defoe’s piece A New Voyage Round the World (1725) is similar to the travel writing of William Dampier who had used this same title (1697). It is needed to have a broad definition of the novel to explain the variety existing during the early decades of the 18th century. At that time ‘novel’ primarily referred to short stories dealing with romance and intrigue. Nevertheless this classification does not suit the text of Defoe. It appears as a travelogue and disobediently traces the set rules despite his denials. The story lacks the packing of events and narration in content that made the other novels of Defoe innovative and groundbreaking. The reader remains ignorant about the captain, who is the narrator, even his name remains in the dark. The …show more content…
For instance, Defoe introduces the reader to the book Robinson Crusoe as “a just History of Fact”. The novelists picked and chose some facts about places and set their adventures about distant places in a romantic form. But the body of the writing was based on concrete descriptions of travellers backed up by the maps of cartographers. Robinson Crusoe is the perfect representation of this phenomenon. The location of his island was authentic and supported by real coordinates. Yet it is flushed with allegorical nuances and animated by the will of providence. The environment is tamed to the will of Crusoe. "So I went to work; and here I must needs observe, that as Reason is the Substance and Original of the Mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by Reason, and by making the most rational Judgment of things, every Man may be in time Master of every mechanic Art". Finally he transformed this island into his personal property. The island became connected to the booming global economy. He converted its resources into goods that could be traded. Then it is changed into a colony, a colony that is stamped with his personality. This dominates the …show more content…
They frequently think this genre only as a tool of imperialism. Perhaps scholars delving in travelogues focus primarily on the manner in which the voyagers impacted on the novelists and the similarities noticeable between these two writing genres. It seems rational that novels would go beyond mere travel telling. James Joyce opined something that many would now agree. He said that Robinson Crusoe was “the true prototype of the British colonist”. Following this argument, Edward Said has argued that the ideology of Robinson Crusoe became the generic norm and that “imperialism and the novel fortified each other to such a degree that it is impossible to read one without in some way dealing with the

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