ACCOUNTING FOR “UNACCOUNTABLE WHIMSIES”: THE UNRAVELLING SELFHOOD OF DEFOE’S MAJOR FICTION

Abstract

This thesis examines Defoe’s pervasive interest in the unconscious, inaccessible parts of the mind. Engaging dialogical selfhood theory, it details Defoe’s method of constructing and narrating character through environment and internal polyphony, only to reveal the inadequacy of narration at revealing one’s true self. This thesis thus argues that the success of Defoe’s psychological realism lies in intentionally destabilizing the dialogical framework underpinning his protagonists’ legible selves through narrative, paratext, and genre. The first chapter will focus on Defoe’s repetitive process of creating and destabilizing the legible self within the novel, intimating an unnarratable unconscious self. The second chapter will argue that Defoe engages the formal aspects of the novel, genre, structure, and paratext, to further solidify the inaccessibility of the individual to the reader by “openly [flaunting] the nature” of the novel (Hunter 279). The resulting effect in his final novel, Roxana, is a strikingly prescient portrayal of psychological complexity. Ironically, it is by testing and unravelling the dialogical characters he so rigorously crafts that Defoe gives shape to the unconscious self despite its resistance to language.