Key Points and Difficulties (重点与难点 )

◆ Daniel Defoe’s artistic features

( 笛福的艺术特征 )

◆ Approaches to read novels

( 欣赏小说文本的方法 )

◆ Characterization in Robinson Crusoe

( 鲁宾逊中的人物刻画 )

◆ English Enlightenment and Sentimentalism

( 启蒙运动和感伤主义）

I. Biographical Introduction

◆was born in London in a butcher’s family, not obeying his father’s will, he developed his interest in business, though his business underwent many ups and downs, yet he was never beaten;

◆He never went to university, but he received a good education in one of the best Dissenting academies （异教学院 ).

◆His marriage with an heiress named Mary Tuffley brought him the sizeable fortune of 3,700 pounds as dowry. When he died in 1731, he left his wife and daughters fairly well provided.

◆His quick mind, abundant energy and never-failing enthusiasm always brought him back on his fleet after a fall.

II. Five Facts to be Remembered

◆ Defoe was a jack-at-all-trades, who developed his interests largely with the working classes.

◆ He was a radical Non-conformist ( 非国教 )in religion, and was intended by his father for the independent ministry.

◆ Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer. Be good at making “good story”

◆ Defoe knew prison life.

◆ At the age of nearly 60, he turned to fiction and wrote the great work by which he is best remembered. Robinson Crusoe earned him good reputation and fortune as well.

III. Artistic features

◆ Defoe had a gift for organizing minute details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible and fascinating.

◆ His sentences are sometimes short, crisp and plain, and sometimes long and rambling, which leave on the reader an impression of casual narration.

◆ His language is smooth, easy, colloquial and mostly vernacular. There is nothing artificial in his language: it is common English at its best.

◆ His novels enjoyed great popularity among the middle class.

IV. Approaches to Read Novels

◆ Narrator/ point of view (the first person and the third person, the omniscient point of view)

◆ Characterization --Protagonists and antagonists

Foreshadowing / setting

◆ Rising conflict—climax—falling action

◆ Motif / Tone and theme / Symbols

V. A Case Study of Robinson Crusoe

◆ The full title should be The Life and Strange Surprising Adventure of Robinson Crusoe.

◆ It is based upon the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, or Seleraig, who had been marooned in the island of Juan Fernandez off the coast of Chile and who had been lived there in solitude for five years. However, Defoe himself didn’t acknowledge this resource.

◆ setting (time) --From 1659 to 1694

◆ setting (place) --York, England; then London; then Sallee, North Africa; then Brazil; then a deserted island off Trinidad; then England; then Lisbon; then overland from Spain toward England; then England; and finally the island again

◆ Narrator: Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist

◆ Point of view: the first and third person

◆ Foreshadowing( 伏笔 ) and symbols

The Major Points in Robinson Crusoe

Characterization Robinson Crusoe

◆ Self-independent; perseverant; inspiring and innovating, adventurous, colonial mind; practical

He is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, He does not

boast of his courage in quelling the mutiny, and he is always

ready to admit unheroic feelings of fear or panic, as when he

finds the footprint on the beach. Crusoe prefers to depict

himself as an ordinary sensible man, never as an exceptional

hero. survival instincts

Friday: The first nonwhite character to be given in a realistic

and individual portray

Q: Why was he named “Friday”?

Q: What kind of a person is Friday?

Obedient, friendly, kind and humane

Q: Compare Robinson and Friday, what are their

differences?

 

Footprint

Questions

1.What does Crusoe react on his sudden discovery of a footprint?

2. What is the symbolic meaning of footprint?

The Symbolic meaning of the footprint

Crusoe’s shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand is one of the most famous moments in the novel, and it symbolizes our hero’s conflicted feelings about human companionship. Crusoe has earlier confessed how much he misses companionship, yet the evidence of a man on his island sends him into a panic. Immediately he interprets the footprint negatively, as the print of the devil or of an aggressor. This instinctively negative and fearful attitude toward others makes us consider the possibility that Crusoe may not want to return to human society after all, and that the isolation he is experiencing may actually be his ideal state.

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Crusoe Saves Friday from the Cannibals

Q:What is Crusoe’s motivation to save Friday from the cannibals?

Q: Being cultivated by Crusoe, Friday lost his own national identity at the same time. Do you agree this statement?

(master/slave; white/ non-white; Christianity/ barbarous eating group)

the center of Europe ( 欧洲中心论 )

racial discrimination

Work to be Prepared

Previewing Thomas Gray’s Elegy Wriiten in a

Country Churchyard ( 墓地挽歌）

What is the tone? How does the poet achieve it?