Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea

The Structure of the course paper the given course paper consists of an Introduction, Main body, a Conclusion and the list of used literatures.

CHAPTER I. Daniel Defoe and his novel “Robinson Crusoe”

1.1. History of the novel

The impetus for the idea for Robinson Crusoe came to Defoe from his reading of the account of a man named Alexander Selkirk who, in a fit of anger, had himself put ashore on a deserted island. Earlier, Selkirk had gotten into a fight with a fellow crewman and had himself and his effects put ashore on an island outside of Chili. When he realized the effect of his actions, he pleaded with his shipmates to come back for him, but it was too late. He was marooned on the island for four and a half years. When he was later rescued, the report states that he could hardly speak any more, but he did apparently quickly regain his speech.

The account of Alexander Selkirk was published widely throughout England; he was the subject of an article by Richard Steele in the Englishman, and an account of his adventures appeared in many other papers. Consequently, Defoe was quite familiar with Selkirk's adventures, and some biographers maintain that Defoe interviewed Selkirk personally, but this is debatable.²
Many of Selkirk's activities on his island are paralleled by Robinson Crusoe on his island; for example, Selkirk fed on turnips, fish, and goat's meat; he became overrun with cats, and he had to use his ingenuity to survive, all reflected in Defoe's novel. In addition, Alexander Selkirk's original name had been Alexander Sclera, just as Robinson Crusoe's real name had been Robinson Kreutznaer.
A clue to one of the basic ideas of the novel is given in the first chapter, when Crusoe's father admonished his son to stay "in the middle station" of life--this station being the one which "had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind." Crusoe's pride would not allow him to remain in this "middle station." So Crusoe, like the protagonists in many Greek myths and dramas, suffers from the sin of hubris and is accordingly punished. Often during his confinement on the island, Crusoe is reminded of his father's advice and rues his own impulsiveness. Furthermore, the father's pronouncement that his "boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born" becomes a prophetic statement which foreshadows Crusoe's later predicament.
The father's prediction comes true sooner than even Crusoe could expect. His first boat founders and Crusoe makes solemn vows in a time of trouble, but as soon as the trouble is over, he forgets his vows. Thus, we have his first reneging on his word to God. Throughout the rest of the novel, he will constantly contemplate his relationship with God and how much God is punishing him for his "wicked ways."
Literature is the second part of a language study. It was always included in studying any foreign languages. Teaching literature is very difficult process, not simultaneous in its structure and it requires the set of literary sources, which would be mostly appropriate to better understanding of the language studied. That is why modern teachers should not only teach grammar and oral practice materials, but also pay attention to learning the best examples of the literary works created by the best representatives of the foreign language bearers, beginning from the classical authors, and continuing to the modern writers and poets.
When speaking about the English language and literature we also take into consideration all the trends featuring England for the whole period of written language existence, beginning from “Beowulf” and not finishing by someone. That is we must take into consideration the historic aspect when studying English.
Without knowing the history of the language, without perfect knowledge all the major milestones in development of the English literature, the teacher will not be able to prove his students the majesty and beauty of the language studied. Frankly speaking, if we ask foreign learners of English, whom do they know amongst the most significant English poets and writers, the most obvious answer will be: Shakespeare, Wilde, and Defoe. Of course, as literary Greek is the language of Homer, Spanish is the language of Cervantes; German is that of Goethe, Russian is that of Pushkin, the English language is the language of William Shakespeare. So we are sure that even the worst graded student of English will undoubtedly name Shakespeare as the best language bearer of English, together with naming some of the most popular of his works, like “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet”, and “Midsummer Night’s dream”. But, nevertheless, the English literature is not Shakespeare only, (though the English literature without Shakespeare is not the English literature as well), the English language is also the language of Chaucer, Byron, Swift, Stevenson, and many others. That is why we think of the general characteristics and analysis of the way the English literature has passed in its development, and of educational value of the latter as the major task of this chapter.³
Studying English literature and acquaintance with it begins with the appearance of the first modern languages. Without getting acquaintance the students with this period of development of English a teacher will not be able to demonstrate from what sources the English words which we are learning nowadays have appeared. The teacher as a “Dawn of Modern English” should characterize this period of time. The studied period in teaching process must be observed through the history of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic languages. Here a teacher is recommended to devote one language to the first Anglo-Saxon epic “Beowulf” (700’s) – the elegiac history of the last hero of a dying Germanic people. A brief revision of the later epics is also strongly recommended: “Dream of the Rood”, Widsith” (the oldest Anglo-Saxon fragment), “Deor”, the “Wanderer”, and “Seafarer”. The educational aspect of this period concludes the idea of the first written sources of the literature of the British Isles. Teacher should also underline that the peculiarity of this literature is that it has no concrete author: all this epic novels are of collected folk authorship, based on the life experience of the people and the aural retelling from fathers to sons.
The third milestone of the English literature, which is to be analyzed when teaching English, is pre-Renaissance time. This epoch is the epoch of Geoffrey Chaucer – the founder of the English poetry. The most famous work of him is “Canterbury Tales” - a series of stories linked together by their story-teller. Chaucer’ work is rather poetry than prose, however, and his story-tellers are still recognizable through 600 years later. That is why teaching English is impossible without thorough studying of “Canterbury Tales”.
The next period in the history of the English literature which should be taught is the literature of 1500’s. In this period the first lyrics appeared: John Scelton wrote it. Here created Sir Thomas Wyatt. A greater writer still was William Tyndale. His translations of the Bible, made under a ban, greatly influenced the later King James’s version (1611). The statesman who most wanted Tyndale silenced and yet the leading humanists of his age, Sir Thomas More, like his friend Erasmus, unable to break to Catholicism, turned pay for his consciousness. Thomas More’s circle, which included John Colet, Thomas Lynacre, Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas Elyot, was responsible for important translations from Greek, Latin, and Italian. So the teaching of this period must be looked through the history of translation. Sir Thomas More rested in literary history for his» Utopia” non-existing land where everything is good and prosperous. Amongst the other educationally valued authors of that period were Christopher Marlowe and Sir Francis Bacon, Edmund Spencer and Philip Sydney. This period is also significant for studying because of the reason that it was the last period before Shakespeare. All that existed referred to pre-Shakespearean language. ⁴
No one doubts that Shakespeare is the most mysterious figure in the world medieval literature. Born in 1594, he stood alone amongst the English writers. The greatest poet and dramatist, Shakespeare left nothing similar to the database of his life. Throughout Shakespeare worked with the simplest of principles, writing at the mind’s own speed, using everything he read, but reworking it first, and depending for character upon the defining trait of flaw. Having written 37 plays and more than 250 sonnets and little poems, Shakespeare up to nowadays rested misunderstood and the argues around his works and his authorship do not become calmer. However, it was Shakespearean language, on the basis of which we teach our students literary English.
The literature of the XVII century has its “i-dots” on John Milton – the author of the poem “Lycidas”. After becoming blind, he wrote one of the most English epic – “Paradise Lost” which retold the story of Adam and Eve and of their temptation by the Satan and fall from God’s favor. The story of Satan’s rebellion can be read in the life of the actual rebellion in which Milton had taken part. In fact, generations of readers have found Satan the most attractive and sympathetic character in the great poem. The educational value for what it is worth teaching is that it was the first call to the traditional preferences of the society.
The 1670’s were the beginning point in the appearing of the new genre in literature – entertaining novel. And the founder of this was Daniel Defoe – a journalist who used to be both the King’s favorite and hostile. In his “Robinson Crusoe”, “Moll Flanders”, and “The Journal of the Plague Year” he turned, as many a journalist before and since, to simulated facts, without bothering to inform the public of its technique. The educational value of Defoe’s works is that his racy and essentially nonliterary efforts stand one of the major building blocks of the English novel. “Robinson Crusoe” was seemingly the most read book since 1700’s up to nowadays. For learning process it is important by the following reason: having written in the plain literary English, it affords to a foreign learner to cognate the English language through entertained reading. This book is also important for us for its being first adventure novel.
The same period is also interesting from the educational viewpoint for the first appearing the magazine language of English. The founders of it were Joseph Addison with his “Tatler” and Richard Steel with his “Spectator”.
The appearance of the first dictionaries is also the education peculiarity of 1770’s. Samuel Johnson edited the first English dictionary. Among the other important literary figures significant for modern teaching process was Alexander Pope - the most admired poet of 1700’s with his own sense of the words. Many English poets tried to imitate Pope’s language but couldn’t. Among the writers the most significant after Defoe was Jonathan Swift. His educational value was in foundation of the English satire. According to the opinions of modern critics, Swift is the best satirist of England now and then.⁵
The second half of the 1700’s is also noticeable for teaching as its poetic significance The first near Romantic, the poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), spoke as a voice of reviving nationalism (Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786). Burns drew from the Scots' traditions and folklore and proved that a Scot need no longer be Anglicized to write great poetry in English. The educational value of Burns is in enlarging the English language with the words of Scotch origin. The second significant poet, whose “Songs of Innocence” are worth teaching the students is William Blake. The works of William Blake (1757-1827), whose Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789, contained a special kind of visionary indepen­dence. Its roots were partly in a tradition of religious mysticism of a deeply individual kind. Blake's later Prophetic Books (1793-1804) anticipated the mixture of politics, religion, and individualism that make up much of modern literature. His "high" lyric style had not been heard in England since the age of Milton. But Blake remained all but unheard in his lifetime. And now we understand that Blake’s poetry is the Example of “pure English” we learn at schools. So that is why his works can serve as an example of literary English which is to be taught by teachers.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is a possible addition to the other four Romantic masters. Other writers continue to rediscover him, admiring his heroic intellectual conceptions and his mastery of propulsive rhythmic force.
Almost as swiftly as the Romantic movement began, it ended. With the death of Keats, the high lyric style disappeared. Lesser writers were not of the same inspiration, and the succeeding generation seemed to hear other voices, abandoning the lyric or writing it without conviction.
The 1800’s became a new age of novelists’ approaching. Jane Austen wrote three of her novels in the 1790's but published only after 1810 (Pride and Prejudice, 1813; Mansfield Park, 1814; Emma, 1816). She is meaningful for teaching for she went to Keats's imaginative church of the open heart but sat at the pew of keen observation and careful structure, and her language was the same as beautiful as Keats’s but written in prose.
Sir Walter Scott, a Scotsman, be­came a model for intelligent commercial success all over Europe (Waverley, 1814; Ivanhoe, 1820). Mary Shelley Frankenstein, 1818) and Maria Edge-worth (Castle Rackrent, 1800) extended the daring of women in literature to the portrayal of psychological and social nightmares. In mid-century, an extraordinary trio, Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, widened this range still further. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) also became a major English novelist (The Mill on the Floss, I860; Middlemarch, 1871-1872).
There were to be no English moral giants on the scale of the great French and Russian novelists. Charles Dickens, however (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836-1837; David Copperfield, 1850; Bleak House, 1853; Our Mutual Friend, 1865; among many others), attained to something at least as great. He wrote, like the early Wordsworth, with the courage of the decent lower middle class, though of city rather than country folk. We teach it for every writer in Europe learned from his broad sympathies, skillful characterizations, and shrewd sense of pace. If he lacked philosophic vision, he made up for it with a stage nearly as broad and all-encompassing as Shakespeare's.
William Makepeace Thackeray, Dickens' contemporary, continued the tradition of 18th-century social satire with a new vitality and a deft hand at well turned and swift moving prose (Vanity Fair, 1848; Henry Esmond, 1852).
As the century progressed, English writers of fiction who worked at a very high level and should be taught include George Meredith (The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859), Anthony Trollope (the "Barsetshire" novels, 1855-1867), Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh, 1903), and the remarkable Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891; Jude the Obscure, 1896), also recognized as among the most enduring of English poets.
Next noticeable period for teaching was the period of Victorian poetry which underwent a difficult time after the death of Keats. The large voices among the Victorians belonged to Alfred Tennyson (Poems, 1832; In Memoriam, 1851; Idylls of the King, 1859-1885) and Robert Browning (Men and Women, 1855; The Ring and the Book, 1868). Both were so preoccupied with the responsibilities of national greatness that their considerable gifts were ultimately betrayed. Educational value of them is that Tennyson's saving grace is his occasional flight of sober lyric; Browning's is his delight in the sheer variety of life's ironies.⁶
Other interesting, intelligent poets seemed unable to find a sense of identity. They include Matthew Arnold and the gifted friend, whose premature elegy he was to write,-Arthur Hugh Clough; and the "Pre-Raphaelites," a group seeking a supposed medieval spiritual unity; the group included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Coventry Patmore. Even a few of great promise seemed somehow blocked from fully realizing their gifts. These include Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850) and Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market, 1862 ;) Thus these poets had no any meaningful educational significance.
Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” (1719) is the first true novel. It demands special and deep study. To study the novel we should commence with our thoughts about English enlightenment. As one of the prominent literary figure of the XVIII century England Daniel Defoe is the founder of the European realistic novel of the new time. This book is rightly included to the circle of the beloved works of the children, so its educational significance should be underlined especially. We have to use the history of English enlighteners in connection with Defoe’s literary activity. we may mention that the English Enlightenment is closely connected with the German Enlightenment use may match mainly the ideas of Enlightenment in Goethe’s work. Daniel Defoe was the son of his time, and of his class, it means that he expressed the ideas of the existing classes. He may be described as a bearer of the world view of the their progressive people’s ideas.
The work of the earlier novelists of the eighteenth century has a drive and coherence from their excitements realizing congenial possibilities of the new species of writing. They were pioneers in the novels of Defoe, H. Fielding and Sterna the tastes and sensibility of their authors are everywhere pelted.
Defoe and Richardson are the first great writers in the English literature, in this they differ from Jeffrey, Chancer, Edmund, Spencer, William Shakespeare and John Milton.
The history of Robinson’s life on the island is a story about creative work of a man, about his courage, his will, creative searching. This is a hymn to labor the source of life. Thanks to his creative work Robinson Crusoe remained a man. This is most remarkable and educative significance of the novel. The novel joined the elements of biographical documentary and adventure novel. The theme of creative labor should be emphasized especially Labor helped Robinson to stay a man in inhuman conditions of his life many years lonely in an island. There are very few selected books which can complete with this world known novel.
Daniel Defoe is not only the author of “ Robinson Crusoe” he is the author of, as his researchers consider, about four hundred separately published works, polemic and publicist articles, pamphlets and so on. Which had been published by him in different editions. Creative energy of Defoe was extraordinary and almost unique for his country and his time, his people.
Daniel Defoe had various hardships but he could fight for survival with astonishing steadfastness staunchness. Defoe could become one of first English professional journalists, editors of influential political newspapers and even private secret of very high ranking persons. Very important Person (Vips) of the government. But in a situation of complex and severe social and political fight he could not fairly well to do and even quite existing for himself. Political Discords strafes pains (низо, шифок,) and court intrigues brought him to the prison and to a Pillory. But in spite of all these. Defoe continued to write and publish books, booklets, and articles about everything which seemed to him worth of informing his contemporaries.
During more than three years Defoe openly, anonymously and under other pennames published pamphlets on very sharp political and international problems. He also wrote philosophical and law treatises, economical works, hand books, guides, manuals for traders, advices for those who were going to get married, all kinds of advices how to behave oneself in the society a poem about painting, general history of handicraft trades, and so on and so forth. Daniel Defoe used to say that he was thirty times rich and poor.
The huge library of written and used by him works wonder us not only with their great member, but also with quantity of names, as well as with their belongings to different fields of life and knowledge, which his creative curious thoughts and ideas none of those works were published under his own name.
Defoe published them giving the authorship to the heroes, Rescuing his books for real manuscripts or diaries, written in the name of the first person. These were the writings of sailors and merchants, thieves and court intricate plotters and all types of adventurers. This feat was the reason for not considering Daniel Defoe as their author, even two centuries later. ⁷
The works of fiction, newer appear abruptly. Most of them are closely connected with the time of their creation, so this is true concerning “Robinson Crusoe” as well.