English 12 - Mr. Rinka Lesson #31 The Novel Defoe, Swift & Austen

The Novel du/english/melani/cs6/novel.html du/english/melani/cs6/novel.html Excerpts from A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature, ©English Department, Brooklyn College.

The novel, like epics and medieval and renaissance romances, has two basic qualities: a story and a narrator. Epics are traditional tales of gods and goddesses, or exceptional humans in great pursuits that combine myth, history and fiction. Romances present larger that life characters either pursuing an

ideal or chasing down an enemy. Romances contain elements of myth, dream and ritual. Novels have regular humans as heroes whose stories are played out in everyday society that is easily identifiable.

17 th Century philosophers’ Rene Descartes and John Locke created the attitude for novels with their emphasis on human experience and its importance in our lives. Both felt reality could be experienced through the senses, and the novel emphasized precise and observable details.

Novels created individual characters who were located in space and time. The 18 th century novels reflected the everyday life of that time. Daniel Defoe may have been the 1 st novelist with his two works, Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), presenting central characters who experience a

series of events. The characters are convincing and the settings for both are realistic. Samuel Richardson was another early novelist who wrote Pamela ( ) and Clarissa ( ). The novel replaced poetry and drama as the most popular literary form.

The novel seemed to represent the lives of the majority of people. Characters included middle and working class people. Novels also dealt with concerns of its readers which included women and servants. Novels today cover many different sub-genres and present a variety of writing styles that all advance

a plot with subplots made of a sequence of events. Novels are accessible to all readers and offer entertainment, instruction, vicarious experiences and meaningful insight. They can be provocative and controversial or self-affirming and comforting.

Extended Assignment You will choose one of three novels: Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels or Pride and Prejudice to read over the next 6 lessons. These 6 lessons will cover each of the novels, and the assignments following Lesson #37 will involve activities using the novel you read.

Extended Assignment Once you’ve chosen the novel you want to read, divide it into 6 fairly equal sections, and read a section after each of the following 6 lessons. You may choose to read on a computer or read the print out, and you can also listen to the work on libra vox.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer and spy, now most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in

Britain, and, along with others, such as Samuel Richardson, is among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, and was published under the considerably longer original title, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years,

all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a

fictional autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

Robinson Crusoe h/521-h.htm LA 12 Robinson Crusoe.doc daniel-defoe/

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo- Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, “A Modest

Proposal,” “A Journal to Stella,” “Drapier's Letters,” “The Battle of the Books,” “An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity,” and “A Tale of a Tub.” Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac

Bickerstaff, MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian (gentle, mild, and light-hearted humour) and Juvenalian (scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule) styles.

Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire

on human nature and a parody of the "travelers' tales" literary sub- genre. It is Swift's best known full- length work, and a classic of English literature. The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote to Swift: "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Since then, it has never been out of print.

Gulliver’s Travels h/829-h.htm LA 12 Gulliver's Travels.doc jonathan-swift/

Jane Austen

Jane Austen Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary have gained

her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers, as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as

a professional writer. Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years into her thirties. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she then abandoned. She wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the

release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died

before completing it. Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Her work brought her little

personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's, A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England.

Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. Though the story is set at the turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, and is often found near the top of "most beloved" books lists such as The Big Read.

It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature and receives considerable attention from literary scholars. Modern interest in the book has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes. To date, the book has sold some 20

million copies worldwide. As Anna Quindlen wrote, " Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery."

Pride and Prejudice 42-h/1342-h.htm LA 12 Pride and Prejudice.doc by-jane-austen/

Extended Assignment You will choose one of three novels: Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels or Pride and Prejudice to read over the next 6 lessons. These 6 lessons will cover each of the novels, and the assignments following Lesson #37 will involve activities using the novel you read.

Extended Assignment Once you’ve chosen the novel you want to read, divide it into 6 fairly equal sections, and read a section after each of the following 6 lessons. You may choose to read on a computer or read the print out, and you can also listen to the work on libra vox.

English 12 - Mr. Rinka Lesson #31 The Novel Defoe, Swift & Austen