Foe: A Ghost Story  

Oleh:

López, María

Jenis: Article from Article
Dalam koleksi: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature vol. 45 no. 2 (Jun. 2010), page 295-310.
Topik: J.M. Coetzee; Foe; secrecy; silence; ghost story; Daniel Defoe
Fulltext: Foe- A Ghost Story.pdf (296.4KB)

Isi artikel

This article argues that J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) may be read as a ghost story, in which Coetzee writes back to Daniel Defoe’s “A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal”. The ghostly character of Coetzee’s novel derives from the silences and secrets pervading the narrator Susan’s story, among which Friday’s mute and enigmatic presence is the most overwhelming, and from the presence of strange creatures that seem to come from various Defoe’s literary works. Hence Susan begins to doubt her own ontological status and to consider herself, and also Friday and Foe, as ghosts, a notion which is explored in relation to Freud’s analysis of the uncanny and the double. Foe, thus, highlights an intimate relation between literature and secrecy, an idea that is developed in relation to the thinking of Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller and Frank Kermode, this secret and indecipherable dimension of the literary work demanding, in turn, a position of blindness and lack of authority from both writer and critic.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali