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Approaches to Teaching Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
Editor(s): Maximillian E. Novak, Carl Fisher
Pages: xxii & 243 pp.
Published: 2005
ISBN: 9780873529174 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873529167 (hardcover)
"This volume offers teachers of a wide variety of students an array of thematic, formal, and ideological approaches with an inventive mix of classroom strategies."
Cynthia Wall
University of Virginia
Long a centerpiece of eighteenth-century literary studies and a significant influence on the fiction of its day, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe remains a standard text for teaching the period and continues to inspire popular adaptations and imitations, from children's books to adventure films to reality TV. In teaching the work, instructors are challenged to separate the popular images of Crusoe from the text and its two sequels, creating distance from the myth without losing sight of why it is so powerful. Students need guidance in recognizing the way the novel blends genres--romance, travel tale, spiritual biography, diary, economic and political allegory--and in judging the character of Crusoe, a topic that has elicited much scholarly debate. The essays in this volume offer classroom tested strategies that address these and many other concerns.
Part 1, "Materials," describes the novel's publishing history, its critical reputation, its fictional predecessors, and its stature as an international text. It also surveys modern editions, scholarly biographies, and relevant Web sites and provides a brief biography of Defoe. Essays in part 2, "Approaches," focus on genres such as travel writing and conduct books; consider how ideas about individualism, education, science, masculinity, and race helped shape Defoe's trilogy; trace the themes of the colonial experience in castaway narratives and Robinsonades; and show how the Crusoe story unfolds in later periods, in J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Derek Walcott's poetry, children's literature, and film.
Contributors
Paula R. Backscheider
John Barberet
Timothy C. Blackburn
Richard Braverman
Anne Chandler
Carl Fisher
George E. Haggerty
Roxanne Kent-Drury
Anne Lundin
Robert Maniquis
Robert Markley
Robert Mayer
Cheryl L. Nixon
Maximillian E. Novak
Charles W. Pollard
Christina Sassi-Lehner
Gordon Sayre
Manuel Schonhorn
Geoffrey Sill
Laura M. Stevens
Roxann Wheeler
Matthew Wickman
Everett Zimmerman
Table of Contents
PART 1: MATERIALS
Maximillian E. Novak and Carl Fisher
Publishing History and Modern Editions
Daniel Defoe: A Brief Biography
The Critical Reputation of Robinson Crusoe and Its Status as a Novel
Scholarly Biographies
Crusoe's Fictional Predecessors
Robinson Crusoe as an International Text: Translation, Circulation, and Adaptation
Internet Resources
PART 2: APPROACHES
Defoe and the History of English Narrative
Teaching The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe
Robert Maniquis
Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels
Richard Braverman
Robinson Crusoe's Parodic Intertextuality
Roxanne Kent-Drury and Gordon Sayre
Weber, Watt, and Restraint: Robinson Crusoe and the Critical Tradition
Manuel Schonhorn
Intellectual and Ideological Contexts
Defoe, Franklin, and Whitman
Geoffrey Sill
Crusoe among the Travelers
Paula R. Backscheider
The Construction of Masculinity in Robinson Crusoe
George Haggerty
Robinson Crusoe and Early-Eighteenth-Century Racial Ideology
Roxann Wheeler
Teaching the Crusoe Trilogy
Robert Markley
Formal and Thematic Approaches
Robinson Crusoe as Literary Art
Timothy Blackburn
A Comparative Formal Approach to Castaway Narratives
John Barberet
A Semester on Crusoe's Island
Matthew Wickman
Comparative and Intertextual Approaches
The Robinsonade
Carl Fisher
The Female American and Female Robinsonades
Laura M. Stevens
Colonial Adventure and Social Disintegration
Everett Zimmerman
Contemporary Responses to Robinson Crusoe
Charles W. Pollard
Robinson Crusoe in Hollywood
Robert Mayer
Classroom Contexts for Robinson Crusoe
Teaching Robinson Crusoe in an Introduction to Literature Course
Christina Sassi-Lehner
Robinson Crusoe as Introduction to Literary Analysis
Anne Chandler
Is There Room for Robinson Crusoe in an English-Literature Survey Course?
Carl Fisher
Teaching Robinson Crusoe in a Survey of the Novel Course
Maximillian E. Novak
Robinson Crusoe and Children's Literature
Anne Lundin
Teaching Robinson Crusoe at a Business School
Cheryl L. Nixon
Works Cited
Index
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