Brazil as hypo and hypertext: a reading of Brazil's images in Woodes Rogers (1732), Daniel Defoe (1719) and Coetzee (1987).

Abstract

This article investigates how the representation of Brazil in A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1928), by Woodes Rogers, reverberates through the English Language literary tradition, influencing Robinson Crusoe (1920), by Daniel Defoe, and later being re-signified in Foe (1987), by J.M. Coetzee. The analysis draws on Julia Kristeva’s (2005) concept of intertextuality, Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism (1981), and Gérard Genette’s notions of hypertext and hypotext (2010), aiming to understand how these works construct, perpetuate, and challenge colonial representations of Brazil. While Robinson Crusoe recovers the exploratory and imperialist perspective found in Rogers’s travel narrative, Foe subverts this tradition by highlighting silenced voices and questioning the colonial discourse. Thus, this study proposes the existence of a symbolic intertextual network that connects these texts and reveals how travel writing and fiction shape cultural representations over time.