Selvi, Ayçe2025-01-142025-01-142024SELVİ, Ayçe. Reading Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness through the Lens of New Materialism, Master’s Thesis, Nevşehir, 2024.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12695/3141New Materialism, emphasizing the vibrancy and agency of matter, offers a transformative perspective on human and nonhuman relationships, challenging anthropocentric views and highlighting the interconnectedness of all entities. This thesis analyzes Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) through a New Materialist lens, focusing on the agency of materials in a colonial context. It examines the entanglement of materials, elements, and humans, critiquing human exceptionalism and highlighting the exploitative treatment of nonhuman entities during the colonial era. Drawing on theories such as Jane Bennett’s “vibrant matter” and “thing power,” Stacy Alaimo’s “trans-corporeality,” Karen Barad’s “agential realism” and “entanglements,” Nancy Tuana’s “viscous porosity,” and Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s “storied matter,” this thesis emphasises the dynamic agency of materials and the roles of the classical elements in shaping both the material world and literary narratives. By incorporating material ecocritical and elemental ecocritical theories, it explores how matter challenges anthropocentric perspectives and expresses interconnectedness. In Robinson Crusoe, the agency of materials, tools and elements such as air, water, and earth is essential to Crusoe’s survival and transformation. In Heart of Darkness, the entanglement of human and nonhuman agencies influences Marlow’s and Kurtz’s experiences and transformations. The overlapping themes of colonialism, imperialism, and human exceptionalism are explored through a New Materialist which emphasizes the interconnected agency of human and nonhuman entities, challenging traditional hierarchical relationships and anthropocentric perspectives. This New Materialist reading critiques human superiority and underscores the interconnected agency of all entities, calling for a more inclusive worldview that fosters ecological awareness and redefines human-nonhuman relationships within colonial narratives.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessNew Materialismagencyentanglementtrans-corporealityviscous porositystoried matterMaster Thesis