the author’s foes: polyphonic narrative techniques in j. m. coetzee’s foe

in this study, the notions of dialogism and polyphony are investigated in coetzee’s novel, foe (1986). coetzee has been viewed by many critics as a novelist whose oeuvre deals with the issues of voice and authority. throughout his novels, characters struggle to represent distinct social stratifications and function as countervoices to the absolute author’s voice. this study examines how the form of narration and also the silence of the characters are symptomatic of the author’s disposition toward having a polyphonic novel. it is argued that the heteroglot nature of the novel is in accordance with coetzee’s resolution to overturn the authority of its canonical eighteenth-century island story, robinson crusoe. bakhtin’s ideas on the inter-subjective nature of meaning and also the democratic essence of modern novel are appropriate for such enquiry of this novel.