Matters of Blood

Nearly three hundred years after the publication of 'Robinson Crusoe' (1719), Daniel Defoe remains an outstanding figure in the twenty-first-century narrative of English literary history. Despite the unbroken academic interest in Defoe's works, many facets of his fictional texts still remain uncharted. Perhaps most surprisingly, a detailed investigation into aspects of violence and its intertwining with power, class, gender, and race has not been undertaken so far. Defoe's fictional works, as the study shows, display violence as an essential pillar of social interaction, not only on the colonial margins or in the wars on the European continent, although these aspects are the most prominent, but also in the very heart of the emerging nation state itself. Offering an analysis of episodes of violence in 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Captain Singleton' (1720), 'Memoirs of a Cavalier' (1720), 'Colonel Jack' (1722), 'Moll Flanders' (1722) and 'Roxana' (1724), the study aims at contributing to the rich field of scholarly research on one of the most influential English writers in the hitherto neglected area of representations of violence and thereby hopes to offer fresh perspectives.