Analysis of Robinson Crusoe as the First English Novel
Teacher’s Guide to
The Core Classics Edition of Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe
By Kathy Sublette
Copyright 2003
Core Knowledge Foundation
This online edition is provided as a free resource for the benefit of Core Knowledge teachers and others using the Core Classics edition of Robinson Crusoe. Resale of these pages is strictly prohibited.
Publisher’s Note
We are happy to make available this Teacher’s Guide to the Core Classics version of Robinson Crusoe prepared by Kathy Sublette. We are presenting it and other guides in an electronic format so that is freely accessible to as many teachers as possible. This guide is one teacher’s vision of how to make this book both understandable and enjoyable to fourth grade students. You will obviously have ideas of your own and may want to pick and choose among the activities and exercises offered here. The author has included an abundance of reading comprehension questions in order to guide the student through specific elements of the story; you may want to select among them according to the needs and reading levels of your students. Consider them, as well as everything else in the guide, to be an option or a suggestion rather than a requirement or an obligation. No doubt you will strive for a balance between reading for accuracy and promoting an imaginative grasp of the themes and a delight in the adventurous plot. The discussion questions and activities should help you in the latter regard. We hope that you find the background material, which is addressed specifically to teachers, useful preparation for teaching the book. As always, Core Knowledge prefers to emphasize what to teach rather than how to teach it, but we also are interested in helping teachers share their experience of what works in the classroom. We hope this guide helps make Robinson Crusoe an adventure in reading for you and your students.
2
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Core Classics Edition of Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe
By Kathy Sublette
Copyright 2003
Core Knowledge Foundation
This online edition is provided as a free resource for the benefit of Core Knowledge teachers and others using the Core Classics edition of Robinson Crusoe. Resale of these pages is strictly prohibited.
Publisher’s Note
We are happy to make available this Teacher’s Guide to the Core Classics version of Robinson Crusoe prepared by Kathy Sublette. We are presenting it and other guides in an electronic format so that is freely accessible to as many teachers as possible. This guide is one teacher’s vision of how to make this book both understandable and enjoyable to fourth grade students. You will obviously have ideas of your own and may want to pick and choose among the activities and exercises offered here. The author has included an abundance of reading comprehension questions in order to guide the student through specific elements of the story; you may want to select among them according to the needs and reading levels of your students. Consider them, as well as everything else in the guide, to be an option or a suggestion rather than a requirement or an obligation. No doubt you will strive for a balance between reading for accuracy and promoting an imaginative grasp of the themes and a delight in the adventurous plot. The discussion questions and activities should help you in the latter regard. We hope that you find the background material, which is addressed specifically to teachers, useful preparation for teaching the book. As always, Core Knowledge prefers to emphasize what to teach rather than how to teach it, but we also are interested in helping teachers share their experience of what works in the classroom. We hope this guide helps make Robinson Crusoe an adventure in reading for you and your students.
2
Table of Contents
Introduction
Bibliography: Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: Ambition and Invention. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986. Danon, Ruth. Work in the English Novel: The Myth of Vocation. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1985. 1537. Downie, Alan. “Robinson Crusoe’s Eighteenth Century Contexts,” in Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphoses, Lieve Spaas and Brian Stimpson, eds. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Earle, Peter. The World of Defoe. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976. Ellis, Frank H., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe. Englewood Cliff, N.J.: PrenticeHall, Inc., 1969. Erickson, Robert A. “Starting Over with Robinson Crusoe,” in Studies in the Literary Imagination 15, No. 2 (Fall 1982): 51-63. Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. James, E. Anthony. Daniel Defoe’s Many Voices: A Rhetorical Study of Prose Style and Literary Method. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1972. James, Louis. “Unwrapping Crusoe: Retrospective and Prospective Views,” in Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphoses, Lieve Spaas and Brian Stimpson, eds. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Novak, Maximillian E. Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe. Berkely: University of California Press, 1962. 14 Starr, G Sutherland, James. Defoe. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1938. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957. 63-74; 85-98.